Humble Schnauzers and a Sam: Baths and Puppy Class

The last couple of days have been busy ones for Nimbus, or has he has been dubbed by Jenn and just about everyone else, Busbus. On Sunday, he had a nice play date with his Poshey. He loves Potion and they play very well together. It is amusing tho when he decides it's time for a nap and Potion tries endlessly to wake him up. She gets rather frustrated and will start grunting at him and pushing toys at him, or jumping over him, pretty much anything she can think of to try to get him to wake up. I guess she figures he came over to play and not sleep. Poor Nimbus just is not a border collie puppy with endless amounts of energy. However, Jenn was taking some wonderful pictures of the puppies and in those pictures we noticed how dirty Nimbus was. So I decided I would give him a bath. Sooooo, this is how it went:

Kenny, my husband, and I got the water started and made sure it wasn't too hot or too cold. We got towels and puppy shampoo out, and took off Nimbus' collar and then stuck him in the bath tub. That went great, of course the sprayer wasn't on yet, so he thought, "Oh cool, a pool in my home, how great, and the water is just the right temperature, this is great!!!" Kenny and I thought well this should go well...take notice of the word "thought". Let's skip ahead to when I turned on the sprayer. Oh my goodness, you would have thought someone brought out a knife and started stabbing a puppy in the bath tub. He started yelping and whining, and barking, and scrambling to get out of the tub. In about a minute Kenny was barefoot and in the tub with Nimbus. I had to remove my shirt due to the fact that the whole right side of it was dripping wet from where Nimbus had grabbed on with his front paws and tried to climb on me to get out of the way of the water. After about 25 minutes of spraying and washing and rinsing we were finally done with the bath portion of the evening. On to getting dried. After letting Nimbus shake and towel drying him as much as I could and cleaning up the hurricane mess in the bathroom and getting dry clothes on, we come into the living room to find Nimbus as hidden as he can possibly be up next to the couch. He had his whole right side up under the couch. Now, I don't know how often other people vacuum under their furniture, but we try for about once a week, unfortunately it had not been done yet at this point, so when we pick him up to put him on the grooming table he has dust all along the right side of his body. We get him onto the table and turn on the shop vac. (yes, I know, this is not an appropriate way to dry my sammy, but for now it works until I can find a dryer I like). I don't try to blow him with it yet, I just turned it on and started giving him treats, well let me tell you, this was not happening in his mind. He was trying with all his might to jump off that table. It ended up taking me, Kenny, and our youngest son to get Nimbus dried. Kolton fed him treats while Kenny kept him from jumping off the table and I blew him with the shop vac. We finally got him dried and combed out. He is such a gorgeous boy when he is clean. We have noticed he has a little bit of biscuit coloring in his fur around his face mostly by his ears and on his forehead, which makes him look as if he is wearing a bright white mask on his muzzle. However, he is clean and none worse for the experience. So it looks like I have a lot to help him work thru, but we are going to take it slow and make sure he knows that everything can be fun and not so stressful.

Tuesday was a great day for Nimbus. He got to go to his first puppy class. I think it made it better for him because Potion is also in this class. But he had a lot of fun with the other puppies in the class. He played very nicely and really impressed the "teacher". She couldn't believe how well he behaved being his first experience in the class. We have been working on door manners and although they are nowhere near perfected he is starting to show some impulse control. He did awesome on the recall exercise, coming right to me when I called him and when it was time to not play and settle, he only took a minute to do that. I was very proud of how well he did. I am excited to go back next week. I really like the class, they use +R in the class so if I want to c/t something he has done well then I don't have to worry about it disrupting anything because it is encouraged.

We have had a lot of fun the past few days with outings and playing. Nimbus has learned his name and comes running willingly when you call him. He has learned the kitty is not something that wants to play with him and he is learning to be easier on the minis. Although the two biggest ones weigh more than he does at the moment, he is as big as they are and then double the size of the other two. He still loves to hide in the cats "cave", I don't know how long he will actually fit in there but until he is too big, I'm sure that will be his favorite spot. Until next time...

Nimbus and Potion playing