Great Gobs of Tansy Updates, Part I

Last Updated on: 15th February 2015, 06:22 pm

I’m terribly behind on Tansy updates. It’s bad. How can I go for 6 months without writing a Tansy post? Oh, well, I did have the captain chasing me around for 4 of those months. Well, I guess it’s time to catch up now. This might take a couple of posts.

Tansy has inherited some interesting nicknames. For some reason, Steve started calling her Shmans, and it stuck. the funny part is my sister called her Shmans and had never heard her called that before. I guess Shmans just fits.

Also, for some reason Steve calls her Shmanser Bear, and Little Bear, but I can’t dare call her that. If I do, I swear she looks at me like “Ahem, no, that’s not your word.” That was solidified the other day when Steve went “Hey Bear!” and she ran to him. I said “Hey Bear!” and there was no movement. Alrighty then.

Also, for some reason, if we say “Look over there! It’s a Shmansington Bear!”, she comes running to whoever says it. It’s pretty funny.

She’s spooky good at picking up patterns…too good. Remember those bullwrinkles,, er, shweens? Well, now if I say, “want a shween?” she will dance by the treats, and not only leap around the box of treats, but put her nose on the bag of bullwrinkles. Also, remember those rabbit ears? For some silly reason, I started calling them konijns (apparently konijn? is Dutch for rabbit). It all started when Brad said it and I thought the word sounded neat. Now when I say that, she goes nuts and points her nose at the rabbit ear bag.

Another weird pattern she’s developed is she has this obsession with my blood pressure machine thinggy. I think it’s the velcro on the cuff. She hears that and comes flying out to hope for a treat. The bad part is she always tries to nudge me when I’m taking my blood pressure, which makes the machine think I have arrhythmia. So, I started saying “you’re going to give me arrhythmia!” One day, just for fun, Steve said “come here, arrhythmia,” and she went to him. Tansy thinks her name is arrhythmia!

Back a while ago, our land phone became super unreliable, which was the final straw which led us to ditch it. In preparation, we changed the buzzer to go to Steve’s phone. We were worried that Tansy would not know what was the buzzer, and stop heading for her crate when it goes off. No, she figured out that Steve’s phone singing its little tune and then us not spending time with the phone usually means buzzer, and runs out to the crate. She’s a little over the top with it though, and goes to the crate way more often than she needs to. It’s kind of amusing. At least she doesn’t find the crate to be a total bummer, so it’s not like she’s unnecessarily causing herself misery.

In that other post, I also mention how every year, the pooch gets a new tag. Well, apparently that’s changed. They just get people to renew their dog licenses and the info stays tied with the last tag they had on. This is way easier for everybody, but I won’t be able to collect all the year’s tags, and I won’t have the tradition of the jingle changing. But overall, this sounds like a good policy.

I’m so proud of Tansy this year, and the fact that she doesn’t throw a fit when I break out the boots. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not thrilled, but I don’t think I have to worry about her running around the office on a mad rampage, or hiding in her crate when I pull out booties. She just gets very still. Sometimes she won’t get into the position that is the easiest for me to get the booties on, and sometimes she bends her legs so it’s harder for me to get the booties on, but that’s the worst she does. Honestly, Tansy, if I didn’t have to put those suckers on, I wouldn’t. I don’t enjoy this either.

She also doesn’t hibernate nearly as much as she used to last winter. She was a sad doggie last winter. She would just come home and flop over and sleep until we had to go somewhere else. This year, she’s a lot more playful, and didn’t need her coat nearly as early as last year. Yup, she’s developing a thicker coat.

We have discovered that Tansy knows her favourite song even if it’s done in a totally different style. Steve discovered that he had a Reggae version of the song…and Tansy, out of a dead sleep, came charging out to greet us not once, but twice.

She also likes this song, but not as much.

I do know that Trixie recognizes one song, Revolution by the Beetles.

I never thought about it, but I would sing it every time I would break out the heartworm/tick/flea stuff, also called Revolution. Well, one day the song came on, and Trix was laying next to Steve on the balcony. As soon as the song got to the chorus, she shot off the balcony and back in the house like a bat out of hell. I can only guess that she recognized the song and wanted no part of getting splattered with that Revolution goop. I’ve meant to write about this for years, I guess now is as good a time as any.

I shouldn’t have said in another post that Tansy had gained weight, but at least I didn’t have to adjust the belly strap. Then I noticed that hair was waring thin at this one spot, right where the belly strap goes. So…I gave in and had to let it out a notch. That made me feel sad, but it also made me feel sad that it had rubbed and caused a bald spot. I haven’t been able to take it back in just yet, but we’ve peeled off a couple of hound pounds, so I think we’re going in the right direction. If I could just peel off a couple more, I think she’d be at a perfect weight. I know she came home at 49-51 pounds ish, but I swear she changed shape and filled out a bit…so I think 55 or 56 pounds would be perfect. At least now I’m getting out and walking more than I did when the captain was ruining my life.

Unlike Trix, she doesn’t have any grey hairs that I know of. Poor Trix was grey at 3 or so, and Tansy is almost 4. But the thing that Tans does that freaks me out is she stretches a lot and will lie down when it looks like we’re spending any time at all in the same place. These were things Trix did when she was at the end of her career. But these are things that Tansy has done forever, so I’m not going to worry.

I noticed that Tansy will stop to shake off at random. She will also stop suddenly to scratch something or deal with something that’s bothering her. Well at least I’ll know instantly if something is wrong.

I had a new experience when I took Tansy to the vet for her physical. She got her Rabies vaccine, and then a week or so later, I noticed this big lump on her shoulder. I didn’t think about it, but it was right at the site of where she got the vaccine. Steve’s not the best at finding lumps, and this one looked huge. I took her in, and they did a needle biopsy and some kind of slide with staining, and said that in fact she had had a reaction to the vaccine, so we have to think about that the next time she needs that shot. We might have to give it in another spot, or they said something about using another formula or something. Lumps scare the heck out of me, so I was relieved that the reaction wasn’t super serious, and it wasn’t something scarier. It took a long time for that lump to totally disappear.

Also in the that’s never happened before category, Tansy got gum stuck in her paw. Thanks to google, I learned that peanut butter, or lots of other oily things, will take it off. I also learned, thanks to Tansy, that she freaking loves peanut butter.

Wow, I’ve been so behind on Tansy posts that I never mentioned her love of bananas. She would eat the pieces so fast, it was crazy. Sure, they made her poops all loose and gross, but boy did she love her some bananas.

Then one day, I tried to feed her a banana, and she would pick up each piece and then throw it back down and look for another one. For some reason, I said “Tansy, are you eating those pieces…or…are you archiving them?” Archiving? Really? Yup, she was making a pile for later. I haven’t tried to feed her bananas since.

But I’ve discovered that she goes crazy for nectarines. I was eating one, and she kept leaping around me. After googling to make sure that nectarines were fine, I cut one up, removed the pits of course, and fed her some. Good lord did she go crazy. Apparently this dog likes fruit. Yup, her raiser agrees. Tomatoes and avocados were also favourites for her to steal off plants when she was a puppy, and at Christmas, when we were visiting my sister’s place, she tried to steal zucchini! Really?

I think I’m going to stop here. I can see 2 more Tansy posts, at least. It’s been way too long. Curse you, Captain Nameless Illness.

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