Tansy Stuff

Last Updated on: 17th December 2017, 06:40 pm

It’s almost Christmas, holy moly, so I thought I should write another Tans post. Amazingly, this one *shouldn’t* be a monster.

I was feeling pretty good about our progress with Tans in the hatch. Well, all of that fell apart when once again, she rode with something that bumped her as we rode. Now, her upset in the hatch has increased. She doesn’t care about a bone at all, and if you’re not careful, when we arrive at our destination, she will jump out of the hatch and run for the nearest safe person. That was embarrassing. We were driving to the Mandarin, and she was shaking and being completely wigged out. When we arrived, Brad was nearby. We opened the hatch, and didn’t have a prayer of catching her. She was in the air and out of there before you could say “Wait!” Sheesh, how embarrassing. I don’t know quite what to do now except ask if there’s any way to fasten things down that are riding with her, and start anew at rebuilding her trust in the hatch.

It’s weird how she reacts differently to different kids. My brother’s son can come see her and she’s as calm as anything, but apparently, my sister’s son makes her super excited, and has since he was a wee baby. The sad part is he’s the nervous one…so Tans’s thumping tail and excitement is not helping make the kid feel more at ease near her. As for Steve’s sister’s little guy, I think she’s mostly indifferent to him. I know she has licked his face a couple of times and he hasn’t been thrilled, but that’s about all I remember.

I know I have commented earlier about Tansy’s ability to snore, but it feels like lately, she has been snoring even more. I was so worried that when she was going to the vet for something else, I asked about it. Everything seems to be in order, so they’re thinking she’s just getting older.

So, you might be wondering why she was headed for the vet. Well, apparently leptospirosis, like Santa Claus, is coming to town, and the vet was recommending vaccination. That’s just freaky. I’ve never had to vaccinate her against it because I don’t play on trails or hang out in the woods. Trix started getting vaccinated when she went to Brad because they do romp on trails and could come in contact with wildlife. But I wonder what brought Lepto into town. Is it the weird weather? Very strange developments.

It’s a good thing that happened, because we discovered that Tans peeled off a kilogram in record time. We’re confused, but I raised the food a quarter cup, and we’ll see if that improves things. She has to go back on Saturday for her lepto booster, and we’ll get her weighed again. Hopefully we won’t have a medical mystery to unravel.

I am starting to think that the news will be good, though, because after increasing her food, it’s like she got younger again. She has been much more alert, much more playful and very much more peppy. Also, her fur got a lot smoother. This has happened before, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but the thing is we had to adjust down to this amount because she seemed to be gaining. We’re not walking a ton more, so I can’t figure out why the need changed. At any rate, sorry about that, Shmans. The decrease in energy happened so gradually that I just thought she was getting a bit older. Also, she wasn’t diving for stuff, so it never entered my mind. I wonder why her metabolism seems to vary so wildly.

As I combed through the blog posts about Shmans, I noticed that I never wrote a couple of things down that need a place. First, I did note that she reacted to her rabies vaccine in 2014. But, I never documented that when we did it in 2016, they gave her a shot of Benadryl and that seemed to have prevented a reaction. She never has reactions to other ones, so I wonder what makes her body flip out about the Rabies one. Or, was it just a one-off? At any rate, any time she gets a vaccination, I ask them where they gave it to her so I can watch the spot.

A quirk I never wrote down is when Tans gets excited and is flying around the room, sometimes she will try to climb up people’s legs or parts of furniture. She doesn’t try really hard, just sometimes Steve or I will suddenly find ourselves being pawed on the legs or sometimes we will see a couple of front legs up on the couch. One time, I heard Brad say “Get off the couch.” I was floored because I’d never seen her jump on furniture. Now I think I know what’s going on. My question is what is she trying to accomplish? Or, did she momentarily forget she was a grown dog and thought she had a wee tiny body that could climb things? She will also ping pong off the sides of things, sometimes hard things, and she doesn’t seem to care. Tans, you’re wacky.

I think that’s about it for now. I’m sure I will have lots more Tansy stories after the holidays.

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