Trixie Scoop

Last Updated on: 28th September 2013, 09:37 am

I think Trix needs a little bit of chatter. It’s been a long time since I’ve devoted a post just to Trix and only Trix.

Trix got her new tag, or doggy bling as some call it. It’s funny. Every year, for a while, she sounds different with her new tag on. I put the old one in the drawer, and gasped. I held in my hand 5 tags. Yes, this April will be five years together. Um, that’s just amazing. And she’ll be 7 years old. Holy crap.

It dawned on me the other day that when that dreaded time for retirement comes, I probably won’t be able to keep Trix because hopefully I’ll still have my awesome job. This, although it is awesome, means I won’t be around to take care of Trix’s needs all day, and I’ll probably be too tired to take care of two dogs at night. So, I’ve actually had to contemplate who would get Trix in retirement. That is a painful thing to think about, kind of like watching your parents and grandparents talk about how their stuff will be divided up after they die. You know they are just being practical, but you just want to plug your ears and go “la la la I don’t hear that la la la la.” Hopefully this is something I won’t have to think about for a long time, but the fact is the average retirement age for a guide dog these days is 8 or so, so since she’s turning 7 this year…well…

You know how I said a while ago that Trix likes to go into her new vet? Well, she’s gotten a little silly, just like she did near her old vet. Time to step up the treats, even though they give her some too. I guess you just really don’t like vets, eh Trixeroo?

But I friggin love this vet. Thanks to a couple of supplements that Trix takes now, she licks herself a lot less, and her skin looks a lot better. Also, on her suggestion of adding a bit of pure pumpkin to her food, her anal glands don’t get nearly as full! Plus, this woman connected me with a clinic in Kitchener that isn’t far from work, just in case, God forbid, something happens to Trix while I’m in Kitchener. I do not want to be googling out vets during an emergency. That’s not how I roll.

And Trix has developed an even bigger hate for the bathing place, which makes me super sad. Last time, she even started shaking. That broke my heart in a million little pieces.

I’ll probably still try to go there, and just treat her lots, but thanks to Trix’s best bud Ruby’s person, I now own a dog-bathing attachment for my own tub, which turns any faucet into the right nozzle for bathing a pooch. Yea! And it looks pretty easy to put on. Double woo! So, if she reeeeally hates that place and it’s actually traumatizing her, then at least I have something for home. Plus, there are times when you have to give your pooch a touch-up, like after they’ve had to lay in icky gross things or after your clumsy friend spills beer all over them.

I guess like us humans have food-related quirks, dogs can have them too. I discovered one with Trix this holiday.

Like I said, she takes a couple of supplements on her food. She takes a fish oil capsule in the morning and powder at night. So, I put out her morning food like normal. She was happily chomping away, when Steve’s sister said something weird. “Um, is Trix eating an advill?” I laughed and said no, it was probably her fish oil capsule. She then said that Trix was trying to hide the capsule under the cupboard, so she fed it to her by hand.

This surprised me, since she’s never pushed away those capsules and just gobbles them up. Plus, if she doesn’t want to eat something, she won’t just take it out of your hand, you have to make her take it.

So, the next day, I watched what was going on…and apparently she has to eat some of the food first, and *then* the capsule. But since she had a smaller dish, when she was trying to root around the capsule to eat more food, she knocked it out. Then she tried to track it down, but the more she pushed it, the more it rolled. Poor dog. But who knew she had to eat the capsule only after eating some of the food?

I sent the present off to Trix’s raisers. I really hope they like it. After I know they’ve received it, I can talk about it more. And when we were home at Steve’s place, Steve’s mom got a potentially really cute picture of Trix. One night, the night the power went off, I guess Trix got really tired but didn’t want to go to her bed I had set up in the other room. Under their tree, they have a tree skirt. I guess this looked like a perfect bed to Trix, so she somehow rooted out enough of it so she could lie down, and didn’t screw up the tree! So there Trix was, lying under the tree, in the tree skirt. Everybody laughed, so I guess it looked pretty cute. I’ll have to wait for that pic since Steve’s mom has it on the camera, but when I get it, I’ll put it up.

I guess that’s all the Trix updates for now. I’ll try and do better this year, but no promises. I’ve become a pretty crumby blogger lately.

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3 Comments

  1. >The tree thing was pretty hilarious. I hope you get that picture. But I don't think she could have gotten to her bedroom bed even if she'd wanted to. That's the room that was loaded up with stuff from the main room, and I think her bed disappeared to an extent. But at least she was resourceful and found one rather than doing that running from person to person silently screaming "Help me!" thing she sometimes likes to do.

  2. >Oh! Which supplement makes her lick herself less? Jayden definitely likes to lick himself. The GDB vet said labs are just very clean. I noticed way back in school. His fur feels great, so I don't necessarily think anything is wrong with his skin.

  3. >It's called Dermal Support and it's by a company called Standard Process. It's a bit expensive, but it seems to have helpd her skin not look so irritated and I think it may have helped her ears a bit.

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