John and I have a Wire Fox Terrier named Mac. We rescued her from a pet store where she had been languishing in a cage for six months, and she has turned into one of the most loving, motherly little creatures I have ever known.
Perhaps because I missed so much of her puppyhood, I am somewhat sensitive about her aging. She only turned four the other day, so it’s not like she’s in diapers or anything. But for several months now, I have been fixated on her coat.
When Wire Fox Terriers are young, they have a distinct color pattern. Their bodies are mostly white, with black or tan spots (sometimes both), and their heads are brown. Well, mostly brown. The color stops around the muzzle, leaving the beard white.
But these dogs have a peculiar coat. Since they don’t shed, it’s recommended that you “strip” them, meaning you have to actually pluck out the dead hair with your fingers.
Everywhere.
When I first read this in a Wire Fox Terrier book, I was horrified. I couldn’t imagine pulling all of her hair out.
But the book stressed that this is not painful for the dog, and in fact, they can grow to like it. The author related her experience of sitting in front of the TV with her Wire Fox Terrier on her lap, pulling little tufts of hair out while the dog slept comfortably. So I thought I would give this a try.
It wasn’t good. It probably wasn’t painful, but Mac was not enjoying it. After every little pull, she would crane her head around and stare at me with wet eyes, imploring me to take up needlepoint.
I thought about doing this to her entire body, between her little toes and around her mouth and eyes, and finally I just said, fuck this. If shaving is good enough for me, it’s good enough for her.
Then I discovered that while shaving is easier, it presents a whole new problem; the dog slowly loses its color. Stripping is the only method that allows them to keep their pretty brown heads.
I was in denial. I checked her after every groom, and comforted myself that the color was still there. This may happen to other dogs, but not Mac.
And then a few months ago, I was confronted with the inevitable. I had to face the fact that my golden girl had slowly become an oatmeal, dishwater head.
This has bothered me more than I expected. In fact, it bothered me almost every time I looked at her.
I decided to try to fix it. Not just for me, of course, but for her. Because surely, when she sees her reflection in the toilet bowl, she must feel it too. And she must wonder, is this all there is? Did I fritter away my youth foolishly pursuing the ball under the couch? Should I have been more interested in the world I’ll leave behind than licking my own ass?
So I started researching ways to restore her color. I figure they dye dogs for shows, so there must be some kind of color I can use to make her feel young and beautiful again.
I read a lot, on finally settled on a particular type of henna product that does not have metallic salts in it, nor does it use peroxide, ammonia or any other harsh chemicals. In fact, this stuff is so pure you can actually eat it, though I don’t recommend it unless your only other choice is The Olive Garden.
Yesterday, I went out on to the patio with Mac, and we sat in the sunshine together while I carefully applied henna to her head. I coated her whiskers with petroleum jelly so there would be no bleed on her white beard, and combed the mud through her face and ears.
After the proper time had passed, we both got into the shower together and I lovingly shampooed her (something she actually enjoys). The whole process was very pleasant for both of us.
Until her hair dried.
Yes, I’ve turned my dog into Chester Cheetoh, and I’m horrified.
The best part of course, is that these dogs don’t shed. So she’ll look like Lucille Ball for months.
Which gives me an idea for Halloween.
Oh man, this is awesome.
Oh dear. I just returned from a 4 day trip meaning Facebook/internet via iPhone only. Am now catching up on “things.” Doing the “Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Course for Internet Dummies.” Highlighted such words as Mac, pluck, hair, painful, ball.
Put this URL on my GTD list. Must revisit.
First: wow. That’s just gorgeous. Hopefully your dog is comfortable with being the center of attention…
I believe that henna will darken over time….
Also, maybe you want The Furminator
I wrote about it in detail over here: http://haineux.livejournal.com/207774.html
But to summarize: most cats and dogs seem to love it, and it is capable of pulling out 1 cubic foot of loose hair per every 5 minutes or so. The advertising pictures are actually truthful.
April- you’ve got some ‘splaining to do…
Just remember – it aint easy being Cheesey
Hide all the mirrors until it goes away.
OMG poor macaroni and cheese! Seriously, I just nearly shot meaty spaghetti sauce out of my nose at work.
As per the furminator… I want it to just to say I’m going to go furminate my pussy.
I am subsequently sharing this with everyone I know.
Oh dear god…I am still wiping the tears from my eyes from laughing. If I get a wire fox terrier….mental note…no henna. Poor Chester.
First, this reminded me of Kim Catrell’s snatch in a Sex and the City episode where she dyed it and it looked like Bozo the clown.
She did this because “Nobody want’s to fuck grandma’s pussy.”
Then I went to haineux to check out the furminator because I’ve been thinking of one but before I drop $40 at the local feedstore I want to make sure the fucker works.
My next click was on the website he said had the best price for the furminator.
It was a senior’s medical device and gadget sort of place where I did not find the furminator but found this:
Beginner’s Hollow Strap-On
Product #: 97515
This item is for those looking to improve sexual health. For hygienic purposes this item is NON-RETURNABLE.
Jeezus
Oh, and for missing their puppyhood–Amen!
I keep rescuing dogs who are grown-up and it pisses me off that I miss those puppy days that someone else who didn’t have the fortitude or desire to finish out the life of the pet got to have. Those cute snuggle puppy moments and the clumsy stumbles while they chase their tail.
Our Josephine is so wonderful and beautiful we do not understand how her owners did not search the ends of the earth to find her. We found her when she was two years old at the shelter and we want a puppy photo or something damnit!
Oh, April! Now it’s been 35 years since my punk-rock days, but if I remember correctly, black henna can tone down the brassy red and make it more a shiny tan.
Or fuchsia. I forget.
Do they still make Crazy Color? You have caused a flood of weird memories- shopping at Trash & Vaudeville, salads at Yaffa Cafe (carrot dressing) on St. Mark’s Place, stepping in dog shit at CBGB’s.
I am soooo old.
I like it
If mac lives long enough the puppy thing will return
My mom got my princess when she was 7 years old in 2000. I inherited her in 2002.
If
She’s 16, and is in a ‘second puppyhood’. She gets that strange little puppy look, she tears things up things, and sjhe has started to have ‘accidents’ again.
(It is not incontinence- where she sleeps-her bed and my bed are dry.)
She even dances around when she gets fed.
You owe your dog some serious steak. What ever you do don’t let Jay Leno see that picture.
foxxy
This is what happens when people have pets instead of children. Bwahahahaha!
Woooooooooo!
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
That is one of the funniest damned things I’ve ever seen. I LOVE dogs– they are the only creatures on earth that will endure our crazy-assed, neurotic behavior with unconditional love. Can you imagine if you did this to your mother? Mine would disown me.
The heartiest laugh I’ve had all week! (No offense to your 9/8/01 Tahitian Cruise show (which I notice has yet to be posted).)
Thank goodness dogs have no egos.
That’s too much. Reminded me of the time I shaved the cat, and my husband said I’d gone too far, that the other cats would make fun of him, and he wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror. Geez, he has this long fur that forms into dreadlocks. It took about 5# off him – made me wish I could do the same for myself.
My boss…ok back when I still had a job…has a wire hair fox and it would get all dowdy looking too but he would take him to the groomer and they would do all the work for him and he would come prancing back all fluffly and pretty again, maybe just this time you can take Mac to the Petsmart hairddidderdy and get her “do” did? Or you can get her a lovely caftan and powder blue eyeshadow and call her Endora.
Yeah, the eyeshadow improves things greatly. Why don’t you pop her color? It just looks, I don’t know, weird, the way it is? :/
COLLAR. Pop her COLLAR.
yeah, I like it!
ABNER!!
Mrs Stephen’s mother turned into a DOG!!!!
1) I laughed so hard at that picture.
2) First it’s special breakfast food, now henna hair dye? Couldn’t AW just walk down Fairfax and adopt a bubbie instead?
Put the dog down and back away.
“Should I have been more interested in the world I’ll leave behind than licking my own ass?”
From Glenn Beck’s diary to your blog.
Not to personally attack you, but there is no “rescue” involved with buying a pet shop animal. This only encourages the cruel practice of puppy mills. If you buy your pets from a store or from a scumbag breeder, you’re helping encourage people to look upon them as purely dollar signs. Millions of dogs are put to sleep in shelters every year because of greedy scum trying to make a quick buck off of their animals.
Not to personally attack you, but shut up.
Sometimes you have to get off of your soap box and look at individual situations with compassion.
If I turned around and walked out of the store, the dog would have been returned to the breeder. She was on her last legs there. The breeder would have put her down because she had flaws that would have rendered her useless for breeding. And I know that for a fact.
So don’t insult me by saying that “there is no rescue” from a pet store. That’s just fucking stupidity.
That dog was sitting in a filthy cage in a run down pet store for 6 months. She deserved a good home and all the love in the world. She got both.
A late, beloved friend of mine went into a pet store one Christmas Eve for a few treats for the dogs (and cat) at home. In his words (and we’re both Italian, so I’m not offended), “there was some guido in there, looking to buy a puppy for his girlfriend and asked for the most expensive one. The owner brought out a shih tzu. I knew that he just wanted to buy it to impress his girlfriend. He wasn’t happy with the price, but was about to pay it when I whipped out my credit card. And went home with Panda.”
Panda and he were inseparable (Panda accomplished that by growling at the other dogs when they came near). Panda got sick and died a few years ago and was cremated. My friend kept the ashes and made his wife promise that when he died, Panda would be buried with him. There was just one problem: NY State doesn’t allow humans and animals to be interred together. Oh, well. A year later, my friend became very ill and died. There were two little stuffed shih tzu toys in his coffin…each one had had its stuffing yanked out and replaced with ashes and sewn back up again. I miss Tony every day, but I smile when I think of him and Panda going out together.
Sorry. My point was that Tony rescued that puppy from a customer in the pet shop. Not close to what you did for Mac, but we all felt that he did rescue Panda.
My first job as a college freshman away from home was in a mall pet store. It was the most depressing job I ever had in my entire life. My first day, the manager showed me how to scruff a cat and shove a hypodermic needle under the skin and I was giving distemper shots to a litter of 8-week old kittens. (One of these kittens came home with me that day and I had her with me for the next 15 years). I only lasted there 2 weeks, but during those 2 weeks, I watched a St Bernard puppy get returned “because it had a cold” and then it died, a brother/sister pair of Norwegian elk hounds had to be separated because the cage was too small, and the female became depressed and listless. When I went in there to feed them and clean the cages, she would be so grateful for any attention at all; but nobody wanted her and she died within the week. A box, containing 2 “weaned” maltese puppies arrived – one puppy was 5 pounds; the other was maybe 2 pounds soaking wet and that one didn’t survive the night. I lasted 2 weeks at that job.
I wish I could have saved all of those dogs.
Actually, most mills aren’t going to take the dog back. Usually, the pet store will just keep discounting the dog until they get it out of there. Or, in some cases, euthanize it themselves (had a couple of friends who worked at a big name puppy store here on Long Island… OK. Canine Corral).
For the mills that take them back, she would have just ended up in another filthy cage waiting for the next stud to come by and pump her. The mills don’t care about quality so the flaws wouldn’t have mattered.
I have a Boston I got from a rescue a friend helps run. He was an Amish stud dog for his first few years. He’s a handsome dog until you get a look at his rear. His back legs look like they were mangled. but that is part being crammed into a cage 24/7 for 5 years and bad genetics.
You and your dog are victims of a curse, brought on by your parents bogarting Lucy’s orange juice.
*******************WOOF!!!******************
Two snaps and a DOG treat
Well, I haven’t read all the comments so forgive me if this brilliant idea already arose, but why didn’t you just rub the last bits from a bag of cheetos on her head first, see if you like it, then go to the last bits from a box of lucky charms, see about that, then maybe sprinkle some Trix on her head? HUH?! How about THAT? And how about humiliating Mac completely when she goes to the doggy park?! HUH? She’s the Joan Rivers of dogs, now! It’s over for her!
Okay, here’s the deal. You can’t give morons a little bit of information or they’ll just say stupid shit like, ‘You didn’t rescue your dog, you contributed to the Vick Campaign for Canine Irradication and you must be stopped!’.
So, I retract my easiest possible comment, such as, why didn’t you just rub cheetos on her head — and tell you that I THINK SHE’S RAD! She looks SO STREET, now! She be da Fly Honey o da Block! No homey mess wid her!
Have you thought about adding a doggie grill? NIIIICCCCCE!
I love you, April. Keep telling it like it is, girlfriend!
OMG! Poor doggie! Whatever you do, do NOT dye Sully’s fur!
Don’t feel so bad about Mac’s dye job gone wrong. I mean, it’s not like you did it out of spite.
Look here:
http://www.photopharm.com/poodlemods-poodles-as-other-animals/
I love this so hard. It is like every diy project I have ever done.
First there is the idea stage (this is the most exciting part–the part that dying your dogs hair seems like a great idea, and easy too)
Then comings the planning, supplies bought (eye brow wax kit in hand in my version of this story) and you jump into the project.
Then comes the moment (usually about 3/4th into it) when you realize there are reasons they have professionals to do such tasks.
Then comes the acceptance that 1/2 your eyebrow is indeed gone or your dog is orange.
and you vow ‘never again’…but we both know it is a lie