This Wet Blanket Is Throwing In The Towel

I dated a woman for a little over a year when I was twenty-five to twenty-six. She was funded by her family in China but she preferred to take whatever work she could find to give herself some extra cash. One of those odd jobs she took was to house sit for someone for a week. When her time there was coming to an end, she asked me to come pick her up and help her finish her final tasks. The homeowners had a dog, some small- to medium-sized poodle mix.

Girlfriend: “We need to give [Dog] a bath before we go.”

She had never had a pet of her own, but I grew up with dogs and cats so I am well versed in typical dog behavior and care. We entered the master bedroom and I made sure to close the bedroom door. Once I went into the bathroom and started filling up the tub, the dog figured out what we were going to do so she stood with her nose pressed against the bedroom door as she wished to flee.

Once I got the tub ready, I went back out of the bathroom to figure out why my girlfriend had not brought the dog to me yet. I found her kneeling by the dog.

Girlfriend: “Come on, [Dog]. Oh, please, [Dog], it’s okay. Please, [Dog]…”

Me: “[Girlfriend], you’re not going to talk the dog into doing what you want her to do; you just have to make her do it.”

The dog seemed pretty gentle and timid so I bent down and picked her up with one arm under her chest and the other under her hips and carried her into the bathroom. She didn’t struggle as I put her in the tub and she eventually relaxed as I showed my girlfriend how to wash a dog.

When we were done, I grabbed a bath towel to dry the dog and my girlfriend angrily rebuked me.

Girlfriend: “What are you doing?! You can’t use their towels for this!”

Me: “Why not? This is what they are for.”

She was aghast and impatient with my apparent foolishness and rudeness.

Girlfriend: “No! It’s rude to use towels to clean a dog! This is not your house!”

Me: “They’ve had this dog for years; she’s obviously used to being bathed. I guarantee you that they use their towels to dry their dog every time.”

My girlfriend couldn’t be persuaded that it is normal for dog owners to dry their dogs with towels. She decided the best thing to use to dry the dog was… the blanket she’d been sleeping with. I told her that she wasn’t making sense but tried to dry the dog with the blanket. Obviously, the blanket was not designed to be the optimal moisture absorber, so it took a lot of rubbing to try and get the dog halfway dry. Her fur was still matted and damp and she started rubbing herself against the floor.

To my horror, my girlfriend beckoned the dog to the sliding glass door to put her in the backyard.

Me: “No, don’t let her out yet. Let her dry more first!”

Girlfriend: “She has to stay in the backyard when we leave.”

Me: “I know, but let’s do that last. She’s just going to roll in the dirt and get muddy.”

She didn’t listen to me and put the dog outside without another word. I watched as the dog immediately rubbed herself on the ground and got her wet fur caked in mud.

I helped my girlfriend put the blanket in the washing machine and run it, put away clean dishes, and do a few other tasks before I drove her home while contemplating the bizarre experience. It probably comes to no surprise that we broke up later; I could no longer deal with her stubbornly sticking to such strange expectations.