The Day Vern Turned Green and had Ants in His.....Oh Never Mind

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Fudge and Vern went to the groomer’s on Monday.  We are having company this weekend and my niece has not met Fudge or Vern and I wanted them to put their best feet forward.  Besides, Vern was green.  Over the weekend, we went to the park and Vern rolled in something and when he landed upright, his side was green.  Since I am perfectly happy living in a state of denial, I covered my ears and hummed when John said it might be goose poop, and instead told myself it was freshly mowed grass. We got it off as best we could and my intentions were to go home and hose Vern down.  Unfortunately, what often happens when I get home is I forget all my good intentions and unless I write myself a note I move on to something else and never look back.  Somehow, I must have decided between the time I discovered Vern was green and the time we got home that my best recourse for the whole situation would be to bake and freeze cookies for the expected company.  If it makes anyone feel better about my neglected dog the cookies were my world famous Sand Tarts and concentration is needed to roll them thin enough so they turn out perfectly. 

Who cares about a green dog when you are trying to roll cookies thin enough to impress guests? No nagging feeling telling me not to forget Vern was green broke through to my senses as I watched a Lifetime movie and baked my cookies. 

 

Hours later, after cookie baking was completed and John had mowed our yard, I happened to glance Vern’s way and noticed he was still green and I thought again that I really needed to do something about it, but instead we went out for dinner and later walked the dogs.  I know this sounds like a case of serious neglect, but long ago, I adopted the philosophy of “why bother?” when it comes to Vern’s grooming.  It is the same philosophy I had to adopt to survive being married to John and I have had to accept the fact at almost every meal he will spill something down the front of his shirt and then act dumbfounded as to how this happened yet again.  No matter that I have said time and time again to lean over the plate when he is eating, instead of trying to bring the food, via his fork, from his plate to his mouth in the same manner as the old standby trick you might use to try and get a young child to eat by moving the food towards his mouth pretending an airplane will make a landing in his mouth if he will just open up. 

Please understand this is just an analogy and in no way what I do to get John to eat my cooking.  I also know if I buy John a new T-shirt, he seems to have a tendency to sort through all his shirts, bypassing anything torn or raggedy, to seek out his newest and best shirts to do yard work, painting, or gardening in, until the new shirt no longer looks new. 

 

Vern is the same way, minus the shirts.  He is just a lovable, sloppy guy and I guess I have grown accustomed to seeing things hanging off of Vern just like I have come to accept the stains on John’s shirts at laundry time.  Fighting the inevitable seems to me to be as hopeless as turning Vern from green to white in the hopes that he will stay that way for any length of time.  So, if right about now you are thinking that lady sure has a lot of excuses for leaving her dog green, you may be right, but I prefer to think of it as a time saving mechanism and a way to maintain sanity. The other thing I forgot to mention is this all happened on a Saturday and I knew Vern was due at the groomer’s first thing Monday morning.  I won’t get into Sunday, other than to say we encouraged him to roll in straw and some kind of dry grass we found up at the park in the hopes that he would roll the green right off, which he didn’t.

 

On Monday, we landed at the groomer’s shop and never once while driving down her long driveway past the goats, the goat-protecting dog, the horse, the guinea hens, the rooster, and other misc. animals, did I think to turn back in embarrassment and shame at the condition of my green dog.  My groomer has been my groomer for almost the entire duration of my owning these Doodles and not only do I like her for her grooming abilities, but I also like her because she does not yell at me ever and seems to take Vern and Fudge’s “before picture” in stride.  Once or twice she has been unable to stop herself from crying out with, “Oh, my,” or “Dear God,” but usually she just asks what phone she can reach me on when she is finished.  She may say plenty around her dinner table later that night about my dogs and me, but to my face, not a peep.   When I walked in the door on Monday, she took one look at Vern and just said, “he is green,” as if she was saying the sun was yellow or the sky was blue and nothing out of the ordinary was in her line of vision.  I like that in a groomer!  She had posted an unusual picture recently on Facebook of some poor dog that had been groomed into looking like a multicolored yarn selection at a craft store and I had jokingly written she should try that on Fudge and Vern next time.  She did ask if that was the look I wanted for Vern, since he was already sporting some green, and I assured her it was not.  I just wanted my usual…clean and tidy.  Later, when I picked the dogs up, I made the mistake of asking how it went and she told me she had to give Vern two baths to wash all the green out and he had ants in his muzzle. Again, she said it as nonchalantly as possible and I received the news with no more surprise than if she had told me Vern liked peanut butter.

Since I have not seen one ant this season, I can only assume he collected them outside rolling in the dirt.

 

I have no solution for the ants other than to cover Vern in ant killing bait strips and that seems pretty drastic and then I have to worry about getting the strips off of all that hair. I also thought about hanging a bug zapper off of his collar, but I am afraid the zapping noise will cause a whole other set of problems for Vern that could require a doggy diaper. 

I guess I am hoping this was a once in the lifetime problem and the groomer won't bring it up again. 

Vern is back to being white, although since the groomer, he has rolled a plenty and I caught him digging the day he was groomed.  Fudge was digging, too, but that is the beauty of a mud-matching dog.  I never knew when I got these Doodles, they would provide me with so many stories to tell and the one about the day Vern turned green is definitely a keeper.  The ant story I might just save for a rainy day.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Vern, Vern, Vern....these are the things we love about you (as long as you're not living with us).  Green fur and ants in your beard....isn't that the way dogs were "supposed to be"?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

This is why I prefer black dogs. I never knew a dog could get grass stains until I got JD. :-)

As for the ants in the muzzle, at my house they would end up in the storage ottomans, since JD uses those as napkins. Perhaps I could get a video of that and you could show it to Vern: "Look, Vern! See how Jackdoodle gets the ants off his face? Now you try!" 

LOL

[Doris, Knox & Flash]

I HAVE EATEN HER SAND TARTS AND THEY ARE WONDERFUL!    Laurie, if you have any left over after the weekend, can I have them????  Pretty please with cherries on top???

Sorry about Vern being green, but you lost me once you posted that pic of your cookies!!

[Bonnie and Kona]

Is it possible ants were attracted by the peanut butter face? 

[Bonnie and Kona]

Ants on his face? Oh dear, oh dear. I better go check on Kona. He is my neater of the two dogs but his beard/mustache are prime for something like that. It just never occurred to me. I'm impressed with your groomer. Can I have a cookie? I'm tired and pretty cranky and my day has hours to go before I sleep.

[Lori, Quincy & Frankie]

I thought about the green poop theory-maybe more than one should.  Doubt it - it would have, I would assume, have had an accompanying fleur de pew!  Love, as always, your blog.  And the cookies look good, too.