I love mud baths

I love going to Bertie's house because they have a mud bath in the garden. Bertie's human mum calls it a fish pond and there are a couple of sad representatives of the fish species in there. But it is mainly mud at the bottom.

I know exactly where it is, behind the herring-bone ferns near the front wall. I can run there with my eyes closed. And dive in. Bertie follows but he is a bit of a wimp when it comes to mud baths and stands on the edge and watches me.

"Come on, Bertie," I call. "You'll love it and we can mud wrestle and our hair will turn black. Like going to the hairdressers to get your hair dyed but it's free!"

Nope. He stands on the edge with his little puppy paws tip-tipping the water. I think he is scared of what his human mum will say.

That first jump is so thrilling because I know I am going to land up past my tummy in gooey, black, squelchy mud. It's hard to explain but it's like being heavy and weightless at the same time. The mud somehow pulls me down but I can still roll around and never drown because I can touch the bottom.

Oh, what luxury. A mud bath all to myself. Like Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. She used to have mud baths all the time. If it's good enough for her then I'm all for it.

Mud is good for my skin and hair. It draws out impurities from the skin, exfoliates dead skin cells, conditions my hair, relaxes sore muscles and joints, improves skin conditions, like eczema and psoriasis (I don't have those but Bertie gets red rashes so he should definitely be jumping in the mud).

Most of all it feels good.

And then I run out onto the lawn. I can roll and squirm and rub mud on the lawn and over the rest of me. Bertie follows but he really doesn't get why I am so excited. The joy of soaking in mud. You can't know until you've actually taken the plunge.

Bertie's human mum doesn't like me having mud baths at her house. She picks me up and takes me into the shower and washes all the mud off. Once, I jumped in the mud bath three times in a row and she was not happy. I like Bertie's human mum. She secretly feeds me tasty morsels of chicken and cheese and even a sausage roll. But maybe she needs to jump in the mud bath too and relax those muscles and joints which stress out when she sees me covered in mud.