“Peanut! Vincey! Come here little doggies!” The tone of voice coming from my human mom is high-pitched as she calls Vince and me to come. I know from the tone of her voice what she wants to do to us. She wants to take off our collars, shove us into this little room and turn on the rain. I hate rain! Doesn’t she know that by now? You would think that after having been around me for as long as she has that she would catch on that standing under the rain is not my idea of a good time. Oh, the indignities that my buddy, Vince, and I have to endure just so she can have fun. Vince seems to like getting rained on for some reason but she always makes me go first.

First she pushes me in under the rain and forces me to get my fur completely wet. Then she pours out this cold, clear liquid and begins to scratch it into my fur. (I must admit that I like it when she scratches my back. It really feels good!) Then she shoves me back under the water until all of the soap suds have come off of me. Then she plunks me up and drops me on a blue piece of cloth that she has laid out in front of the rain machine. My human sister then grabs another blue piece of cloth just like the one I am standing on, and drops it over me before I have the chance to shake the water out of my wet, cold fur. I have to wait patiently for her to dry me off before I can shake. A dog ought to be able to shake when he wants too!

After Vince has had his turn under the rain, has been dried by the same blue piece of cloth, and shaken the extra water out of his fur, we both sit in front of the big rectangular piece of wood that blocks the hole that we enter into the rain room. I don’t know why, but my human mom and sister make us sit in front of the piece of wood, waiting for our freedom. They are always saying how cute we look just sitting there. Anyway, once they remove the piece of wood from the hole, Vince and I don’t waste any time getting the heck out of there. In fact the excitement of being free is more than we can stand, and we just have to run down the stairs and round and round the table in order to let go of some of the energy that gets trapped inside of us every time we are forced to go in the rain room. After suffering the indignity of being rained on, we have to reassert our masculine canine pride by grabbing our favorite squeaky squirrel in each of our mouths and then pulling in the opposite direction to see who wins the toy. Most of the time Vince tires out before I do; but since he is the younger one, I go ahead and let him think he won.