Last Updated on: 19th March 2014, 08:07 am
I think it’s time for another episode of let’s googoo and gaga about Trixie. They’re so much fun.
I’ve never written about her giant burps she lets out after eating. Some of them sound like they came out of a person! I was home for Christmas and she burped and mom looked around to see where dad or my brother came from. Now that’s a big dog burp.
If you put Trixie on a leash and walked her around Guelph, she would probably show you everywhere I go. She always makes me look like such a lush if I take her into this funky little mall we have downtown. She heads straight for the liquor store! We’ve been there before, but we’ve also been to the chocolate store, the pharmacy, the Radio Shack, er, The Source, *whatever*, the cafe, but what does she book it for? The booze! Man alive you’d think I was there all the time! She’s developing quite the memory for people we know, and their cars. She recognizes cabs, friends’ cars, buses, it’s amazing.
She’s also capable of amazing leaps of deductive reasoning. Steve’s sister came to pick us up, and I took Trixie to go pee. She watched Steve and his sister get in the car, and when it pulled up next to where she was going pee, she decided that they must be waiting for us, so she wasn’t going to poop. Silly girl.
Sometimes those leaps of reasoning are wrong, but I at least know where her mind is at so I don’t feel like her mistakes are dangerous. I was standing at a corner, and a woman in an idling car at an intersection said I could go ahead. I repeated it back to her to be sure, and we started off. Because we’d had a conversation, Trixie thought maybe I wanted to get in her car! Woops! I told her not today, and she continued on. But hey, I could see where she’d get that idea.
I knew snow would give her troubles, but I never thought she would treat mud as an obstacle to be avoided like the plague. But she did! She would stop dead and show me the mud like “No no. Don’t make us walk through that horrible stuff. No no nooo!” Silly Princess Trixie. But at least the mud is getting to be less prevalent. I love spring. Right now, I can walk outside without even a coat. This is perfect. If only it was like this all year.
I took Trixie out for a flexi on Sunday, and I forgot how much I enjoy them in the spring. I can run behind her without tripping over snow and ice! It’s just plain fun! I love watching her brain work. I think she figured out that underneath the snow, the same grass was there all along. She was sniffing at some little bits of snow and saw there was grass under there. I could have been dreaming, but I think something clicked in her lab head. She was having so much fun, even more than she had in the winter.
We were having so much fun that we, um, flexied a little too far. Trixie was romping and sniffing, sniffing and romping, when suddenly I noticed that I couldn’t hear the corner’s audible signal anymore! Woops! We were around the corner and travelling up the other street. We were safely on the inner grass, but woops! Trixie suddenly realized we were on foreign territory, because she stopped dead and started looking left and right. I eventually figured out where I was, and we made our way back, but that’s when you know you’re having fun!
I forgot how much of a perma-wag Trix gets going. She had it last year when we came home, and with the change in the weather, it made her less waggy. Now, it’s back! It’s so fun to watch! My puppy enjoys this weather as much as I do.
One thing she hasn’t done yet with this weather is do that flop and snort routine when we come home from walking somewhere. She still flops and snorts in the morning, but there’s no post-route flop snort, or sprint. Now, she just walks around the room really fast. I think she’s happy, but I really enjoyed the post-route flop snort! I hope it comes back.
That big heavy bone I got last year when I came home finally died a month or so ago. It wasn’t intimidating in the least anymore! It had just gotten very pointy at each end. Oh dear. But Autumn, my room-mate from guide dog school if you don’t remember, sent her another one and it arrived today! Heehee! Trixie just about grabbed it and ran off!
AS an aside, Autumn’s dog is having some troubles and is getting looked at by GDB vets. Let’s hope the results of tests are good. I don’t think the troubles are really serious, but they’re serious enough to get her a trip back to GDB for tests.
Wanna know something else scary? The roll of bags that I bought when I got Babs, and still had when Trixie came home, is still kickin’! It has a wabble to it now, but it is very much alive and has many many bags to go. When it finally dies, that’ll be a scary day. Yea Market Fresh roll of produce bags. You rock my world.
Next week, I take Trixie for her annual checkup! Yeah! Again, that feels special to me. That’s something I never got to do with Babs. Hopefully all the news is glowing and good. I’m going to start her on Revolution to prevent nasty parasites from biting her, because I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Hopefully it’s easy to apply.
Oh, Steve’s little brother has competition for Trixie’s affections here in Guelph. She has fallen head over heels for The guy who came over to watch Mania with us on Sunday. My god! I don’t know what it is, but she just can’t get enough of him.
I have some thoughts that keep circling about Babs after I wrote that final journal entry. First, man did that dog get a lot of ear infections! Lord! I think she had 3 in the time I had her! Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t get trained to clean her ears. Lab ears are prone to infections! Trixie has had 2 infections during our time together, both of which were caused when her ears would get licked by other dogs, and the alcohol-free baby wipes I was using just weren’t doing the trick. Now that I have the wipes from the vet, we’ve been ear infection free!
And man did Babs have relieving issues. I’m sure anyone who read my final Trixie training entry would have gotten to the part where I talked about how Trixie had already pooped and peed several times here in her new relieving zone and would have been like “What’s the big deal, she’s pooped and peed a few times in her new home. Woopdy friggin doo.” But if they knew Babs, they would understand. Whenever Babs was in a new place, she would not go. She wouldn’t poop, wouldn’t poop, wouldn’t poop. and then she exploded. I was lucky she held it until we got to the park.
Visiting people was a ball of fun. Barb, do you remember how many rainy evening trips we made out to your lawn hoping she would just poop already? She wouldn’t poop until the last day I was there! And then she pooped a few times unexpectedly. I remember your dad saying “don’t worry about relieving her, she already busied herself in the backyard.” Uh, um, oops.
And Babs wasn’t too good at letting me know when she had to go in an emergency. Trixie figured out that I cannot see, so if she needs to go in one heck of a hurry, she should come over to me and wack her nose into my leg or my hand. Then when I would get up, she would walk to the door. Yup, that’s straightforward, to the point, and effective! What was Babs’s I gotta go signal. She would sniff my coat! No sir, that would not get my attention. I was just lucky mom was still there when she did that.
And let me say again that I was a fool with Babs. I would think nothing of taking her down completely new routes a couple of days after coming home, expecting her to just know what to do, even if I didn’t. Ooo there were some really really dumb crossings I did where I didn’t line up right, and I just thought she’d fix it. Oh boy no she didn’t, and we had to be rescued! It was bad, bad times. Soon Babs learned that I hadn’t a clue, and started exploiting that, dragging me towards food and anything else she could scavenge. Oh the lessons I had to learn. Sure, you can go on new routes eventually, but that comes with time. AT first, you have to do the tried and true so that you know you can trust her and she knows what you expect. Then you can go exploring.
I think that’s about it for another episode. I’m sure I’ll be back sooner than later. Tomorrow is The Trixter’s birthday, and next Tuesday, we will have been home one year. What a year. What a learning process.
