Scrub-a-dub-dub

There's a ton of dust where most of our foster dogs come from and their fur holds onto it like crazy. Add to that the fact that there are loads of ticks in the Central Valley of CA and that means the first stop after a foster dog arrives (after that first night of sleep actually) is the bathtub.

Rothko didn't think this was a load of fun, however he also didn't fight it and was a good sport, even when I made him sit through having a coat conditioner rubbed in after he was shampooed.

Bath time is a great time for a close inspection of a dog, especially when they aren't wiggly. A few things we discovered during this inspection was Rothko has a lot of small scars on his face so was probably on the receiving end in a few dog fights. He has pressure callouses on patches near his front elbows so likely spent most of his time on concrete. The shelter tattooed him when he was neutered so he's got his little green mark down there and his neuter incision is a little red so I sprayed some colloidal silver on it to help it heal up. And then lastly we discovered he has two "high toes". In this case the outside toe on each of his front paws sits up higher than the rest and it looks like the nails on those two haven't been trimmed in awhile so we'll be doing a nail trim on those soon. It's important that the nails on those toes stay trimmed up since they tend to curl back dramatically and can cut into the pad.

Once he was all clean and fancy he promptly proceeded to get his legs all muddied up tearing around in the back yard so he's definitely a normal dog.