Bonnie missed her haircut

Feeling guilty is what I do these days whenever I pet my dog

Bonnie.

The problem is that Bonnie is a goldendoodle and doodles

don’t shed. Their fur just keeps growing longer and longer until

you take them to a groomer for a haircut.

I called her groomer a couple of weeks ago but was told I

couldn’t get an appointment for Miss B until July 1. Fortunately we

haven’t had any really hot days lately so she hasn’t been too

uncomfortable. Knock on wood about that.

The prospect of having Bonnie uncomfortable has had me

giving passing thought to trying my hand at grooming. But I’m

confident that if I tried such a thing my wife would be giving me

my next haircut. And that is a deterrent like nothing you may have

imagined before.

Goldendoodles are great dogs. For one thing they are very

intelligent, unlike a few dogs I’ve owned way back in the day. I

won’t mention any names or my spouse might get involved in my

grooming after all.

My family has had dogs pretty much all of my life going back

to a German shepherd we had when I was a kid. His name was

Snuffy — he was named after the old cartoon character Snuffy

Smith.

Our Snuffy was a natural babysitter and watched over me

and my two siblings enthusiastically. He kept us out of a lot of

trouble over the years and even bailed us out when we managed

to get into some. German shepherds are great dogs and they are

quite bright, but doodles are a tad sharper. Those things seem

capable of handling math problems.

Dogs of all kinds are among the many items that have gone

in short supply during the coronavirus pandemic. People have

been snapping the critters up to provide companionship while

they are holed up in quarantine. And presumably for long

afterward.

Increased dog ownership is one of the good things to come

out of the pandemic. Surely some of those relationships won’t last

but they have given many of the four-legged critters a new lease

on life. And they also have given a very large segment of the

world’s human population a new appreciation for the value of

having a dog in your life.

My wife and I even experimented with bringing a new

goldendoodle puppy into our lives to keep Bonnie company. We

fully intended for the relationship to be permanent but after a

couple of months we realized that a puppy wasn’t something we

could really handle at this stage of our lives.

When we bought the puppy the woman breeder made me

promise that if we ever decided not to keep him we would give her

first choice at taking him. We did as promised and that beautiful

little goldendoodle now has an honored place in the breeder’s

family. (I checked.)

The puppy escapade was a lesson learned for me and it did

work out well for the little goldendoodle. Our Bonnie is only six

and doodles are fairly long-lived so we are hopeful she will be

with us for years to come.

And here’s hoping that the vast bulk of the dog and puppy

adoptions that occurred during the pandemic lockdown work out

as well.