Bathing a
Puli is a lot of fun! Just look at the pictures below. These pictures are made
when we bathed our Pulis after we went to the beach. That is why there is so
much sand in the bath. Notice the two empty shampoo bottles. One for Toby and
one for Terry.
This is
how we bath them:
·
We are
used to go to the sea first to let Toby and Terry run in the water. This helps
removing the yellow stains caused by urine. It dissolves in the salty water. And
a lot of dirt rinses out of the coat. When we get home we put them in bath and
rinse out the salty water and sand.
·
If
it's not possible to go to the sea (in the winter), we
fill the bath halfway with water and a little shampoo. We put Toby and Terry in
it and pour the suds on them. If they
are wet through and through we let the water – which in the meantime is very
dirty – flow and rinse them.
·
After that
we shampoo them. That is not as easy as it seems, the felt absorbs the shampoo
and thus it’s not easy to spread it over the entire coat. We also have to lift
the cords to make sure that there will be soap over there. We use one bottle per
dog.
·
When they
are totaly soaped, we ‘knead’ packets of cords to loose the dirt. This is
quite a heavy job, one feels it in the wrist.
·
Than we
rinse. This is extremely important. We use lots and lots of water. From time to
time we check if there is still soap in the cords by squeezing it. If there’s
still foam we have to rinse more.
·
When they
are foamless we knead the superfluous water out of the coat and than we use
conditioner. This fixes the natural grease from the coat and also has a pleasant
scent. This is agreeable for us and they don’t seem to have a problem with it.
·
They get a
second rinse and knead to make them as dry as possible. The water that comes out
the coat now goes through the sink and not somewhere in the house.
·
Now for
the toughest: trying to get them dry. If you leave a Puli drying in the open
air, it’ll probably take three days until they’re a little dry. The felt
will also smell very musty. That is absolutely not the purpose, so we use
everything available to dry them. First we use some towels and then we blow them
with a föhn. We blow the air from inbetween the cords. (We cannot dry the
inside of the cords, the structure of the felt is too thick.) We repeat this
every hour or so, until after some ten times they’re dry.
We've made some clips of the bathing. The first is about going to the sea, the second about the actual bathing and the drying can be seen in the third...
As you
notice it’s quite a job. The washing itselves takes about one hour and a half
per dog, the drying at least 24 hours. We wash our dogs about every three months
or at least every time they go to a show.
When Toby
and Terry freshly washed hit the street, we hear the most original things. Some
of these are listed here:
·
“Yo,
rasta man vibrations” (this is the number one).
·
“Mister,
your dogs look like girls” (a very good second place).
·
“Look
mama, sheep” (little ones then).
·
“Meeuuhh”
(perfectly fits the previous one).
·
“Look,
twins” (in fact 2/5 of quintuplets).
