9.29.2008

Itchy Max

Tonight was dog bath night.

Molly got her traditional bath and combing, and Max got a haircut and then a bath.

Max has been having a hard time recently with Cedar, so we tried to be especially delicate with him during bath time. It is a ritual that all the dogs agree on - they hate it.

J gave Max the "Max Special" haircut, where basically he just completely shaves him. We had been putting this off, so he was a lot fuzzier than we normally allow him to get.

After the hair was gone and "Naked Max" emerged, we saw another reason for his misery. His has a fairly good size patch of skin that was completely raw.

A few weeks back, Max & J walked into a nest of tiny, tiny freckle-sized ticks. We got all the ticks off of both of them, but tick bites itch for weeks.

We had noticed that Max was scratching pretty frequently. You could even hear him. He would either do the Thumper reenactment or he would do this new growl-rubbing thing. He would stand on the sofa and growl. It took a while before we realized that he was growling at himself. After the growling, he would roll around in the corners of the sofa.

So, we knew he was itchy, but we had no idea the damage his little claws were doing to his skin underneath all that fuzzy hair.

Poor Max. I guess that we will have to keep him away from Cedar as much as possible for a little while. I am sure that was his plan all along.

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