Leo has a bath

Today I gave Leo a bath for the first time (he got into something outside that was stinky). In the photo, he’s standing in the laundry tub (the only dog who fits in it), so I got to stand up to wash him, which was a nice change. Last night we completed his transition from puppy food to adult dog food. He’s a Big Little Boy now! 😆

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Jul 16, 2018 at 10:01pm PDT

Today I gave Leo a bath. Nothing unusual about that, except it was the first time. That, and being fully onto adult dog food means he’s now fully a grown-up part of the family.

I got the idea to use the laundry tub for his bath after some earlier incidents in which he ran around in the mud and I needed to wash his paws. That was much easier than sitting on the floor and washing him in the shower, as I do with Sunny and Jake (for now). I’ve always washed the other two in the bath, but can’t do that at the moment (which is why there’ll be a change eventually), but whether using the bath or the shower, it hurts my lower back. A lot.

Washing Leo in the laundry tub was better—for awhile. By the end, though, my back hurt every bit as much. Maybe a bit more. On the other hand, no sink is actually high enough for me, so even using the kitchen sink would have ended up hurting my back (don’t look at me that way: I happen to know that people have washed human babies in a kitchen sink, and I fail to see the difference).

Against that backdrop, last night I have Leo the last few nuggets of puppy dog food. We’d bought a bag of puppy food back when he came to live with us, but he turned one year old on June 1, and that meant it was time to change food.

It was the middle of June before I finally got the adult dog food, in part because we had so much puppy food. When I finally started the transition, I put a few little bits of the adult food in with his puppy food. Over time, I gradually increased the amount of adult food, and began decreasing the amount of pupy food until last night, when he got the last of the puppy food. All up, it took three weeks or so to make the change.

Many, many years ago I’d read that this is the best way to change doog food, even if it’s only one brand to another: A gradual transition. That way, I’d learned, they have time to adjust so they don’t get an upset tummy. It’s always worked for me, and this time was certainly no different.

So, today got his first bath in his still kind of new home, and has fully changed to adult dog food. It wa a big day for him, but, I’m sure, a little bigger for me. That’s also not unusual.