Bath Day + Pupdate

I don't bathe my dogs very often. In fact, I bathe my dogs so infrequently that every time I do bathe them, I do it only because I can't remember the last time I did it. So needless to say, when Bath Day comes around, it's kind of a big deal.

Our Bath Day began because of Audrey. Now, as you may have realized by now, Audrey is, for lack of a better word, a BAD puppy. When she is outside her main objectives are to eat/grab as many items as physically possible. Grass, twigs, plants, rocks, ants, flowers, leaves, unidentified objects, and so on. What she does is she'll get one of the aforementioned objects and race to the flower bed that she has claimed as her own personal sandbox. Once there she will dig, chew, and eat as many items as possible. If she can tell that you are on to her she will start racing around the yard with the object in her mouth, wait until you can almost catch her, and then take off again. She was having a wonderful time at her salad bar and sandbox when I realized just how dirty she had gotten.

Her bath was fairly uneventful. She did manage to climb out of the utility sink twice but was unsuccessful in jumping off of the washing machine. She is probably going to be too big for the utility sink by her next bath anyway, so we won't have to worry about that. After her bath I thought she should meet Mr. Blow Dryer. I've never met a dog who actually likes the blow dryer but after a few minutes of screaming and trying to simultaneously rip my arm off and run away, she finally settled down a little bit and let me finish. After that she was so tired that she slept soundly in her crate for the rest of the afternoon...
Obviously I'm lying. She slept for maybe an hour and then went straight to the water bowl to ruin her lovely blow dried ears and then ran outside after Mom had watered the grass to play in the mud.

Speaking of being bad, we have a theory about our precious little Audrey. She's got these gorgeous golden/yellow eyes. When they are fully golden she behaves like an absolute angel. When her pupils get big and her eyes look more black, that's when you know she's going to be bad.

Now although her registered name is Argyle's Velveteen Rabbit, we also have her "official" name that we call her. We call her Audrey Bella MalaMala:

Audrey - after the amazing Audrey Hepburn
Bella - after the main character in the Twilight Saga
MalaMala - Mala means "bad" in Spanish and clearly she's bad x2

So whenever she's got the black eyes she is known as MalaMala. :) She's got several other nicknames as well including variations of Audrey such as Audrina/Audrita. Apparently Field Spaniels do this little dance move when you call them to you, they will come and then suddenly their little butts curve around and reach you at the same time as the front half of their body. I was told that this is called the "comma" for obvious reasons, but we also call her Chueca (crooked in Spanish) or Cashew.

Tonight I had Dad and Matt deliver her to me at work at 5:45 PM so I could have a few minutes to work with her. She met some kids and did quite well with them except when all four of them wanted to pet her at once. She sniffed a child in a wheelchair, and met several new people. She met a gigantic chihuahua x who she was quite smitten with (she would play bow and then smack him in the face with her huge paws), and a crazy chocolate lab. I told the lab people that she is often mistaken for a lab and they thought that was funny, but even I have to admit she is the exact same color as a chocolate lab.

We worked a little bit on loose leash walking/gaiting. She did a little bit of free stacking, and she sat politely for everyone who asked her to sit. Overall, the only issues she had were when the group of kids were trying to pet her and she got a little nervous, but I know she needed to poop too. So that might have been why she was antsy.

Oh and as per the usual everyone and their mother (literally) was quite confident that she is a Cocker Spaniel.