Can you recognize the symptoms?

I think most of you furparents out there will recognize the key elements of PTBD – Post Traumatic Bath Disorder.

There’s the immediate post-bath rolling around on the carpet in an effort to rub away any scent or cleanliness that may remind her of said event.

Then comes the fleeing from the scene in an attempt to get away from the evil bather.

Next, she demonstrates overwhelming feelings of anger at the bather, characterized by piercing eyes and a pouty face perched on paws.

In extreme cases, she will demonstrate a reversion to infant puphood – a curling up in the fetal position, sometimes accompanied by shaking as if she were newly born and no one bothered to swaddle her in a comfy blankie.

This is some live footage of Ella in the midst of a PTBD episode after being bathed upon our return from the park yesterday. Faint of heart, please be advised – Ella’s PTBD is so textbook that she will have you all thinking I am a bad bad momma. I can assure you that at the conclusion of this video, Ella was transported straight to the poshiest vet on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, put in an incubator to stop the shaking, and then given the best grooming of her life to ensure her coat fluffed up to its optimal potential. Oh, ok, look, so I took her out of the bathroom, did the fun towel rub thing until she was as dry as I could get her, then wrapped her in a brand new and totally dry towel until she was comforted to sleep. Amazingly, that did the trick.

If only we humans were so quickly and easily cured of our psychological maladies…