Love my dog, not so much in love with the dog smell

In the mornings, Reilly likes to come up and say good morning to me with his nose nudging my hands. We do a pretty regular morning routine of my petting him all over, kind of like a doggie massage. Whenever he is outside with Barney & Betty, running around all day, Reilly's hips must hurt him because he is pretty slow getting up after he's been laying down and going up the stairs. So I like to massage his back and hips, and he loves it. Sometimes when I'm petting his head and ears and under his chin, he'll move his body along my hands and nudge at me with his butt. His butt-nudging thing is so adorable... I mean, really, who could resist that cutie pie nudging his butt at you? Not me.

I like to pet him like that in the mornings before my shower because anyone who owns a dog knows that usually your hands smell like DOG after you've spent time petting them. Reilly gets a bath regularly, and still, right after his bath, he will smell like dog. So taking a shower after helps remove that smell from my hands. But when I pet him, like just now, I will go wash my hands with double the liquid soap and double the time... but the dog smell can still linger faintly. I have found that a mixture of Dial and Lavender liquid soaps does a pretty good job. I once read or heard that rubbing your hands on stainless steel can remove onion smell, so I've even tried that. Didn't work. I've tried vinegar, too, but smelling faintly like vinegar isn't appealing either. I also tried a squirt of dog shampoo, & that didn't work. This morning, I found the ideal answer to post-petting dog-smell hands.

A while ago, shopping with Sammy, he showed me the Crest scratch and sniff toothpaste packaging. Why I thought Crest Whitening Expressions Lemon Ice would be a good toothpaste flavor is a mystery to me. It's like brushing your teeth with furniture polish or floor cleaner. And then drinking coffee after brushing your teeth with lemon... yuck. *shudder*

This morning, after an especially long petting session with sweet Reilly (and I wonder how many search hits that sentence will get!), I washed my hands and then washed them again. Still smelled like dog. Then I noticed the Crest Lemon Ice tube... a huge squirt and voilà! No dog smell. And it doesn't smell strongly of lemon, either... just clean. We've bought so many toothpastes, mostly at Sam's request, that end up tasting so awful... and now, instead of throwing them out, I can put them to good use. Yay me.