Sticky Times with Wires

Demi- The German Sticky Haired Pointer!

Life with this breed is never boring. They can find more things to do, more trouble to get into than one could imagine. 

Last night we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm blow through our neck of the woods. I knew it was coming, so I closed up the kennel, turned on the air conditioner (it was dang hot here) and cranked up the radio to LOUD! I figured all of this would keep the dogs quiet and calm. 

My daily routine is to head out around 8 am every morning to start the day in the kennel. I was bit late this particular morning, and got out there around 8:30. The moment I got near the front door, I knew I was not going to be happy. Demi was there, front feet up and the door and looking out the window. Not a good sign of things to come. 

There she was all happy to see me, surrounded by 40 lbs of dog food scattered all over the floor, the kennel welcome table upside down, the cushion from the couch in a million pieces, stuffed toys scattered all over the place, and black sticky stuff everywhere! 

Apparently the booming thunder and blinding lightning the night before was more than she could handle and she wanted out of the kennel, and into the house. In her apparent unhappy state, Demi found her way into a storage area where we had a bag of asphalt waiting to patch the kennel floor. That bag of asphalt was now everywhere, except in that bag! If I hadn't been so dang mad, I would have thought to get the camera for some pictures of the carnage. Some day I would have found this all pretty funny. 

My morning routine was a bit out of whack now since I had to figure out how to clean this mess up. Picking up the big hunks of stuff wasn't bad, but have you ever tried to shovel, sweep or remove 20 lbs of asphalt from walls, floors, couches and blankets? Not easy.  Luckily, with a cool head I took Ms. Demi "gently" by the collar and put her back into her run. I think she was safer there, then anywhere near me! I didn't really look at her.......didn't want to look at her!

So for the next hour and a half, I swept, shoveled, picked up and scraped asphalt off of everything, threw away 6 couch blankets that were full of the stuff, and tried to salvage some of the 40 lbs. of very expensive dog food.  My shoes were also tossed into the trash by the time I finished. All back to normal. 

Later in the day I let all the dogs out for a romp in the yard and noticed Demi looked a bit, well, odd. Called her to me and found the dang dog was also covered with asphalt!!!!! Black, sticky, gooey asphalt! Oh great.  For the next hour we scrubbed, plucked, pulled, cut, brushed and combed chunks of goo out of her coat. 

I did learn that normal soap doesn't do anything for asphalt. The only thing I found that seemed to work was straight pine oil, poured directly onto the dog, rubbed in well, then rinsed, rinsed, rinsed and rinsed! She lived through it all.... but trust me, next time she may not!