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Bath Time!!
While
giving the dogs a bath on land is a simple affair (if your dogs behave),
keeping them smelling nice on a boat can be more challenging.
You're concerned about fresh water consumption on a boat because
your tanks only hold so much. But,
inevitably, the day comes when you have to wash them aboard.
Our first dog bath came September 22, 2000.
Here’s how it went (and some pictures too).
The
first obstacle was figuring out where to get enough water
to wash Max and Bailey’s thick coats.
We decided to use our ‘anchor wash-down’ pump.
It pulls water from the surrounding body of water and pumps it through a hose on
deck. While it’s not
drinkable water, our anchorage in St. Michaels MD was fairly clean.
No oil discharge or foul smells were noticed.
In salt-water locations, we’d use the same hose for
washing, but would do a final rinse with our more precious fresh water.
Ok
we’ve got the water, now where to wash them with all that hair!
We went with the cockpit as our bathing spot.
It was easy to confine the dogs to one location and washing out
all the leftover hair was fairly simple with the large cockpit drains.
These guys shed quite a bit.
It takes a lot of fur to cover 100 lbs of dog!
Max
and Bailey drew straws for who went first -- Max lost. That's
 actually
a blessing. Max is the
easier of the two when it comes to baths. Max will stand in one place and act like he’s in a car wash.
Wet, lather, repeat, and rinse.
No complaints.
Bailey
on the other hand took full advantage of the little space in our
cockpit. He is
known to scoot around, trying to escape.
While not
enough to get in trouble with the humans, it's enough to make you chase him in small circles while
trying to bathing him. And then there's his famous shake just as you get him
soaped up.
But in the end, he gets just as clean and he LOVES to be toweled
off.
So,
next time you find yourself on a small boat with dogs to wash, you can
remember our story and have a good laugh at your own adventures.
As one of our friends says, “That’s Yachting.”
Bailey Waits His Turn.
He's Next! (and not happy about it!)
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