The Price of Stupidity

I heard the shower at 7:30AM. I was awake, but my brain wasn't quite engaged yet. (Ah, summer. Sleeping in rocks.) My semi-coherent mind thought, "Really? Josh was up running at this hour of the morning? Miracles never cease."

And then I heard Micah walking around, in and out of the bathroom. The shower curtain slid back on it's metal pole, and the shower came on. So clearly, it was just water running into the bathtub before. My mind was waking up faster than it really wanted to. I realized that I'd have to to go see what was *really* going on in that bathroom, because it was becoming more and more evident that Josh wasn't involved at all. I figured that Micah must have had a potty accident, because he insists on taking a bath after such incidents. Feeling fresh, n'at.

I walked across the hall to the kids' bathroom, and Micah decided to just waltz himself right out of there when he saw me coming. He was fully clothed, so the shower wasn't for him. This wasn't a good sign. I tentatively pulled back the shower curtain, and there stood the dumber of the two spaniels. The fact that she just stood there, in water 6" deep and the shower raining down on her, proves that she's the brainless wonder. I mean, any of the dogs run the risk of getting trapped in a corner by Micah, and thereby being subject to whatever it is he wants to do to them, but being too dumb to escape from a bathtub the moment he's not there holding her down is the definition of stupid. It's not like she enjoys a bath, either.

I turned the shower off, grabbed a towel, wrapped the drippy dog in it, and carried her to the master bath tub. At least I could keep an eye on her while I got dressed. I'm not going to tackle any kind of emergency in my nightshirt, no matter how minor it might be. And the dog just stood in the tub, waiting for a brain to magically grow inside her head.

We have a utility tub in the laundry room, installed for it's handy ability to bath dogs in, so I carried the towel-wrapped spaniel downstairs and hosed her off. I am pretty sure there was half a bottle of shampoo on her head, and it took forever to wash out. But the poor thing had shampoo in her eye, too. I tried rinsing it as best I could, and hoped it washed it out. I apologized to the poor dog as I bathed her, because even stupidity doesn't deserve Unsupervised Micah.

There are questions. One could wonder if the dog was dirty and Micah was just trying to clean her up. And if so, where did she get dirty at 7:30AM? And why, pray tell, would he carry the dog upstairs to a bathtub when dogs aren't allowed upstairs and we've never, ever, EVER bathed a dog in a tub in this house? That's what the utility sink is for in the laundry room. There will never be answers, of course. There will, however, be a vet bill. That poor eye is horribly irritated and in need of professional help.

I've lamented the impending start of school, but maybe it's time to get the boy out of the house and challenged with something other than chasing down dogs.