M40間諜米格魯的秘密日誌

Usually we take Illy to a professional dog groomer once a week to have a bath, but it turns out to be quite costly, so we decided to do it ourselves and reduce the frequency of her visit to the groomer to once a month instead.

But the problem of bathing a shiba inu at home is, how to ensure that all of her thick furs are dry?? The first few attempts at blow-dry end up with a semi-dry shiba - we had to dry her up in the sun, not sure if she would suffer from a sunstroke by being there for more than half an hour - until someone told us to try out the following tip:

Get a big box and put her inside. Illy was a bit confused about what she was supposed to be doing in this box. As it turned out, the only box which was big enough at home for this maneuver is this one from a TV home-shopping channel: it looks like we had just opened a gift box and found a Shiba Inu delivered to our doorstep!

To Illy's credit, she was very calm and composed about it, although you can see in her eyes she is a little bit nervous about what we are going to do with her (and the box) next...

Now comes the blow-dry part: apparently it is more effective to blow dry your dog in a box when you are using a normal hair dryer, because the hot air would remain trapped in the box, hence making it easier to dry the furs. As soon as she saw the blow-dryer, Illy knows what is going on here and up comes the serious face.

Look at that face... she seems to enjoy this blow-dry in a TV shopping box thing. Without offering any resistance (quite unusual for a shiba inu, but Illy has almost always been an exception to the rule), Illy cuddles up to my Dad while getting her hairs done.

The nice thing about Illy is, unlike many shibas who are not afraid to make their negative feelings known, anywhere anytime, Illy seems to possess the virtue of patience, and would actually try to endure whatever we are doing to her until she really cannot put up with it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if Illy is really a shiba or .... ???

This method of blow-drying in a box is admittedly more effective than ordinary blow-drying, but it is still not easy to dry her belly hairs and her paws. But Illy seems to have no fear of getting a blow-dry in this box and gives me a wink (!).

Blow-dry job done!!! A Happy Dry Shiba!!!

Copyrights 2009. All Rights Reserved. All text and photos by YC Cheng.