Martin took a tour of the neighborhood a few days ago and came back to the house stinking, as they used to say, to high heaven.
He’d found something dead and wallowed in it at great length. If you are from Fitzhugh, you would say he wallered in it, and that actually seems a better description for what he must have done.
I am speculating it was a road-kill elephant, based on how he smelled.
After dark, he showed up on the porch, happy to see everyone and whining to come inside.
We let Martin and Monroe come in the house for extended periods and usually let them sleep in the bedroom. Martin curls up in a chair and Monroe sleeps on a pet cushion on the floor beside my side of the bed.
This is because they are good barkers and have learned the sounds of the people and cars that are supposed to come up our driveway and those that aren’t.
They alert us of delivery drivers, for example, well before they stop their trucks.
I figure they are good deterrents for would-be burglars.
On this night, though Martin wasn’t sleeping anywhere near the bedroom.
If you have ever looked down a highway on a hot day in August and seen the heat waves shimmering five feet off the ground, you have a good idea how a silent haze of stink wrapped around Martin everywhere he went.
I grabbed him by the collar and took him to the bathroom, where he got a 20-minute bath with shampoo and something else that Kindra found.
The bath worked a little. Some of the stink washed off and some attached itself to my hand, which was hard to get clean and odor-free afterward.
Martin was not happy about the situation. He had put a lot effort into perfuming himself with an aroma that only dogs can enjoy and he didn’t appreciate half of it going down the drain.
Afterward, the bathroom stunk, too. Enough that Kindra felt obliged to bleach the tub and the floor and wash the floor mats.
Martin spent the night outside, and the next several nights, until we decided to try another bath.
Our friend, Google, suggested we try a soap with a degreaser, so he used some dish soup that included it.
The degreaser helped. You could pet him without getting stench on your hands, but he still smelled too much to be in the house.
So, out the door the two of them went, Monroe having to share Martin’s banishment.
We would whiff Martin from time to see if the dead elephant smell had dissipated.
Finally - after 10 days - he was back to smelling enough like a dog that he could come back inside.