There’s just something about dog hair. It floats. I have opened new items of clothing — right out of the plastic bag and before I slide it over my head, it’s covered with dog hair. Every morning, I open my computer after it has been closed all night and it is filthy. Covered with dust and dog hair. I’m pretty sure most of that hair belongs to the Duke, but maybe some of it is mine. Long-haired women shed.

I had been planning to clean my computer for a while. When you are processing photographs and can’t tell if that mark on the picture is a mark on the picture or dirt on you screen, it’s definitely in need of a good cleaning.

I took out my tools — the new cleaning kit that I’ve been saving for a special occasion (I seem to get one each time I buy something camera-related) — and my bag of brushes. My Bausch & Lomb lens cleaning spray. Paper towels. Q-Tips, the pointy ones that get into all the corners, Finally, the hand vacuum.

I sprayed down everything, top to bottom, cleaned the screen, the keyboard, and the outside of the computer. I even cleaned the stand it’s on. The more I cleaned, the more hair came out. Clumps of it — and — hair, dust, and pollen. Plus a few crumbs.

A handful of Q-tips and a fair bit of paper towel later, I began to despair of getting the keyboard genuinely clean. Every night, I close the computer and every morning, when I open it, it’s full of dirt. Mostly Duke’s hair, but also house dust. How does it get in there when the lid is closed?

Garry has the same problem. He doesn’t shed and if he did, it wouldn’t be long white hair.

When I ran out of paper towels and Q-tips, I gave up. I asked Owen what he uses to clean a keyboard and he said “A brush and compressed air.”

I don’t have any compressed air, but I have a lot of brushes. The brushes were outclassed by the volume of hair. It just kept coming. I’d pull one out and there’s was a clump underneath it. I was moodily considering hiring someone to take the computer apart and get under the keyboard to clean it, which is when Owen pointed out that he used to do that (fix computers) for a living. He can’t manage the software anymore, but he can take a laptop apart and clean it.

If Owen can clean it, I say HELL YES! I have another computer and Garry has an iPad, so we can both manage for a day or two without the bigger laptop. The amount of dirt generated by one medium-sized furry creature is nothing short of amazing. We’ve had many other dogs over the years, but his fur seems to have a will of its own.

I’m still puzzled as to how so much of Duke’s coat slithers into our computers.

Duke’s hair goes where no hair has gone before.

Categories: Anecdote, Computers, dogs, Humor

Tags: dirt, Dog hair, dust, humor, Marilyn Armstrong, pollen