It has snowed quite a bit here recently and no one is enjoying it more than my dogs. They love to dash through the snow, get themselves all tired out, and then collapse in my office and snooze heartily for the rest of the afternoon.
The other day after a particularly snowy vigorous outing, the all-furry team came back inside and began the arduous thawing process in the hallway. They get big snowballs attached to their fur, which subsequently melt into lakes on the linoleum.
Usually, I’m pretty good about keeping them out of my carpeted office when they are soggy. (My carpet has enough problems as it is.) I have a baby gate that I put across the door and the canines snooze away in their favorite hallway spots. But this week, after a while, I looked up and all four fuzzy faces were staring at me with sad soulful looks through the holes in the baby gate. They all seemed really distressed and I didn’t see any snowballs on them. So I let them into my office.
What a mistake.
The hounds collapsed into tired piles of soggy fur in my office. I didn’t realize quite how soggy they were until the smell of wet carpet mingled with wet dog and started wafting about. Even though the snow appeared gone, it wasn’t. My carpet had little ponds of water that had formed on the surface and were soaking in nicely.
So the moral of the story is don’t believe those sad soulful looks if you have hairy dogs. All that fur can hide more water than you might expect.