Some of the Craziest Things I've Ever Done

Cutting a dog's hair!

I've done some crazy things in my missionary days.  Some are probably better left untold.  And some I'm planning on telling you here on this silly little blog.

Do you remember the post about the bad little dog named Nicky?  He was a little poodle mix that belonged to another missionary family.  We took care of him for about four months.  One time while I tried to trim his hair.  He usually went to a professional dog groomer and would come back looking like quite the Mr. Poodle.  The time that I trimmed his coat he looked like such a mess that one of the missionary ladies that saw him told me she was going to let the furloughing owners know what we had done to their dog.  Thankfully the owners were very easy going and didn't mind one bit.

Well, poor old Blackie got a really bad skin problem one year.  He would scratch and scratch all day long and all night.  I tried shampoos for fleas and ticks, got him some medicine, tried a tick dip.  I tried to fumigate the area where he slept for bugs.  I even started buying a really expensive dog food thinking maybe that was the problem

Finally one day, somebody suggested maybe we should just shave down his coat as close as possible to get rid of any fleas and ticks.  I figured I had cut little Nicky's hair that time and he was a super mean dog, so this couldn't be so bad, right?

First of all, it took forever - more than a whole hour.  But Blackie was so good and stood still the whole time.  Second, all the fuzzy, curly black fur was making me sneezy and itchy.  Third, it was super hot and all the fur particles were sticking to my sweating arms.  I thought I'd croak.  But we got it done!

Sad thing was that it didn't really solve the itchy problem.  Later we finally hauled Blackie off to the big city to see the vet.  The vet did lots of tests and prescribed lots of medicine.  Blackie was allergic to fleas!  That's right!  We had been giving him regular flea baths but had run out of good flea collars from the States and all the fleas were loving his fluffy fur.  He was a mess.  After a few weeks of medicines and super strong medicated shampoos, he finally got better.

The vet didn't ask about his funny haircut!

Next week, I'll tell you something else CRAZY that I've done on the mission field.