Chase's Chatter: Dog bowl showers are perfect for road trips

It hadn’t been an entirely pleasant morning. The hotel bed wasn’t exactly Egyptian cotton and neither of us had slept anything close to baby-like. Despite this, we’d still dozed through our first few alarms and a sense of frantic urgency consequently hung in the air like powdered chalk.

It was day two of our drive home from Washington, and my girlfriend and I were understandably burnt out after spending 10 hours in the car the day prior. Neither of us were looking forward to the 10 hours of driving this new day would hold either. But as we got our late start on the road and began pouring caffeine into our bodies, it became clear that our two canine passengers were even more reluctant to spend another full day in a stuffy car filled with empty coffee cans and crumpled snack wrappers. As soon as the two dogs entered the back seat in the parking lot of that Idaho hotel, the look in their eyes seemed to shout a desperate plea in unison, “You can’t be serious, this again?”

About an hour into the excursion, my girlfriend was driving the car and I sat in the passenger seat. We’d been arguing about some minor, trivial thing that was almost certainly spawned by a lack of dusting from the sandman. In between bouts of bickering, we tried listening to an audio book through the car’s speakers, but neither of us could concentrate much on the words given the situation. Eventually, we just sat in an awkward sort of silence that felt longer than 100 hours in a car.

After one of the dogs peeked her round brown head over the center console and into my ear, I decided I’d try to give her some water. I grabbed our collapsible rubber dog bowl, stretched it out and emptied a plastic water bottle into it. Leaning over the seat and craning my neck, I held the bowl for the dogs to drink. They each looked at my offering, then back at me, then back at the bowl before turning their heads in unison and curling into fuzzy balls.

“Well, guess they didn’t want a drink,” I said to my girlfriend, who was still watching the road in silence.

“Told you they wouldn’t,” she answered with a coarse whisper.

“Well, I don’t think I hurt anything by offering the dogs some water,” I replied very matter-of-factly.

We sat quietly for a few more minutes as the audio book droned on in the background. Signs and telephone poles appeared to whizz past us as we coasted down the interstate. I then became aware of the dog bowl full of water that sat on my lap. Clearly, it had to be emptied. Without much thought I rolled my window down. Air pushed through the open window and through the car as if I’d opened an airplane door at 30,000 feet. Without a single cautionary thought in my head, I clung to the bowl and thrust my fist out of the open window.

Naturally, water went everywhere but outside. Concentrated air pushed every drop from the bowl back into the car in a single whoosh. Water dripped off of every surface, each person and each dog as if a wet grenade had been dropped through the open window. My girlfriend and I stared at each other for a few seconds, then at our drenched shirts, then back at each other. After a few more seconds, we both erupted into laughter.

“I’m definitely awake now,” she said through a fit of chuckles.

“You’re definitely welcome,” I joked back before wiping her face with a hoodie.

And just like that, our road trip went from slightly hostile and awkward to playful and warm. The silliness of the moment made it clear how pointless our arguments had been. It was as if the water from the dog bowl had washed away all the grime from bickering. From then on, the road trip felt more like it should’ve from the beginning – a good time in disguise.

Because ultimately, any time spent with your significant other should be a chance to laugh and love life. Sometimes you may just need a quick dog bowl shower to realize it.