...DOG HAIR.

Quite a lot of dog hair. :-D

So does your human.

It's been past time for Cassie and Ruby's doggy baths for quite awhile. I try to put off bathing them until the weather is warm, because I'm afraid of getting them chilled. Ruby has normal fur, but Cassie's hair is like a lion's mane, only all over her body. It's so thick and lush that it takes all day long to get dry, even in Arizona's parched climate.

Today the temp is 109 in the shade, so, even though thunderstorms threaten and it's a bit muggy, this seemed like a good time for dog laundry.

The pre-wash brushing yielded a giant pile of blurry fur, most of it from Cassie. This doesn't count the fur that fills the vacuum cleaner every week.

Exactly why this soccer-ball sized pile of hair is blurry escapes me. But blurry or not, it's large.

Laundering the dogs in the bath-tub caused a degree of canine annoyance but neither of the ladies tried to remove my head. Each one did deposit another chunk of dog hair in the drain strainer... Plumbers love furry dogs.

Both dogs look very funny as they start to dry after a bath: their hair stands up all over their bodies! And they have to run around and around...they race outside and fly around the yard in some kind of doggy ecstasy.

What is that, with dogs? I've never known a dog that DIDN'T do that. To a pooch, they've always finished a bath with a great tearing-about of the house and the yard, like some sort of frantic doggy celebration. Does bathing them make them feel so good they want to do a dance to spring? Or are they so grateful to have survived an encounter with water that they're dancing to the joy of life?

Oh well. The post-laundry brushing extracted another mound of dog hair.

Amazing.

A few hours later, their remaining hair was dry and it was off to my son's house, where -- believe it or not -- the sheer volume of Charley the Golden Retriever's hair beggars the imagination of any human that lives with corgis. Dog hair on the window sills, dog hair in drifts around the throw rugs, dog hair like dust across the tops of tables. o

My gosh, but the corgis looked spiffy: their CLEAN coats so smooth and handsome. Hard to believe that such a little dog could accrue so much extra hair.