Vomit Comet

What is with this climate? Now I know why they got fur for my fur. It’s c-c-c-c-c-c-c-cold up here! No wonder the trees fall apart and leave their leaves on the ground. Brrr!

And now, the ground is covered in this white stuff. She keeps saying, “This is snow! This is snow!” I finally find out what this snow stuff is about. Some of it is soft white stuff, and some of it is slippery white stuff. I have to go a little slower, just a little, so I don’t fal down. The first time she took me out to do my business in the white stuff, I thought if I just dug long enough, I’d find the old grass. It had to be in there, and if I just sniffed, snorted, and dug some more, I could find it. But nature isn’t as patient as I am and my nose was getting cold, so I had to give up and sit my buttt on the cold white stuff and do my business! Yuck! This is no fun!

But now that I’m used to it, it’s kind of fun. I like to flop down on my belly when the snow is all soft and deep and stretch my paws out. What did that girl from the floor below call it? Doing my seal impression? Yeah. Well it’s fun. I can leave marks in the snow and find them again. I can find other dog paw prints. Neat! I don’t have to just sniff them out, I can find where their feet have been! Maybe this stuff isn’t so bad.

But I don’t like what they put on the sidewalk. It hurts. It hurts a little less now that Carin started putting that goop on my paws. I think it’s doing something. I just have to not lick it off. If I do, and she catches me, she just puts more on and looks at me all mad. But that salt stuff. It makes me limp and she has to wipe it off. Sometimes, I try to avoid it when we’re coming back up on the sidewalk. I tried to just miss it but still walk in the same direction, but that wasn’t good enough. Then Carin yells “We’re still in the road!” and I have to go through it.

You know, I take back what I said before about humans being wusses for wearing shoes. Don’t ask me how I learned to make links. I’m just that smart. Anyway, I want shoes now. They keep trying shoes on me, but they keep falling off, or they hurt, or no one can figure them out. I won’t fight if you find me good shoes. Really, I won’t. I don’t want to step in that cold stuff anymore. It’s hard to think when my feet are cold.

This snow stuff is confusing. Sometimes, we have to climb over it, usually at street corners, but not all snowbanks are for climbing! So many complicated rules!

I have more toys again! Some came from that place I came from with the other puppies and the trainers. I just know it! When she opened the package, sniff sniff sniff! Yeah! That’s the old place! I love those toys. She got me a huge huge huge bone. It’s big, but I can still pickit up and walk with it. She says hopefully it won’t get dangerous for a long time. I still don’t get this dangerous thing. But at least with the big bone, I can see where I’ve been. There’s this other toy I just got. I think it has magical healing powers. I chew on it, chew chew chewchewchewchew…and it never changes! I can’t see where my teeth have been. I can chew on it for ever, pick it up and carry it around, and it looks the same. Is she sneaking out and getting a new one? Sniff snif..no. This one still smells like me!

What is with time up here? I just got used to the time-change, and then things changed again. She was getting up really early and feeding me and then we had to get on the city bus really early. Then we had to walk to another place where buses came and catch one to somewhere called Kitchener. There was another guy on that bus with a dog. I really wanted to kiss that dog, and he wanted to kiss me. Sometimes, we’d sneak a nose-wiggle. Then, the guy with the dog would get off the bus and we’d keep riding it. We’d get off and walk a few blocks and then go in this cool big building to this office place with more computers and she typed all day. But there were cool people. One of them brought me home-made treats. When she had a break, she’d take the harness off and let me play with the people. They all smelled like dogs and they all loved me! Then at the end of the day, we’d walk back to the place where the buses came and get back on a bus and it would drop us off near home and we’d walk home. Then, finally, an hour off schedule, she’d feed me! At least with the time-change, the time changed in the same way at both ends. Not this time-change. She says it wasn’t a time-change, she had a…what was it called? temporary job? Yeah. But it was fun, even though I had to wait for food and she’d groom me at night. I got to see that other dog and the cool guy who gave me treats. I miss them now.

I used to like getting groomed. Now, I’m not so keen. We have to stand outside in the c-c-c-c-cold to do it. Now I just want her to hurry up and be done with it. At least she does.

Ah well, I guess this isn’t so bad. I always have a warm bed and a warm house to come back to. We don’t walk in the c-c-c-c-c-c-c-cold for crazy amounts of time. She tries to pick the shortest path too. I guess she doesn’t like it either. Then why does she live in it? She has the power to choose! Why doesn’t she leave the white stuff? Silly humans. Sometimes I wonder why they say they’re smarter than us.

You know, so much has changed in the last few months. I wonder what kind of weird things I’m going to see in the next few. But as long as I’m with Carin, I guess it’s cool. The only cooler thing would be to see my old California mommy. I wonder how she is. I saw her with another puppy the day before Carin and I got on that big flying car bus thing. I guess that puppy just headed into the place where Carin met me. I hear she’s learning how to do all the things I know. I wonder where she’ll end up. I wish I could tell her what adventure is coming. She has no idea. I sure didn’t.

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve written about Trixie. Let’s fix that.

I don’t think Trixie quite knows what to do with all this snow. The first time she saw it, it was slippery, and she tried to fly at her regular summer pace, and quickly realized that was not a safe plan. She was completely shocked by the white stuff. Later that morning, I had her out on the balcony, and then she seemed happy as hell to frolic in it. She was flopping around, rolling in it, trying to eat it, sniffing it all over. Every time she hits a new patch of snow, it’s like a whole new thing for her. She was making footprints in it when I had her out to play and then following the paths she made. She certainly doesn’t hate the snow, that’s for sure.

That’s not saying she doesn’t have snow issues. Sometimes, she can be absolutely awesome when we’re walking, and figure out what snow she has to climb over and what snow she doesn’t, and walk a perfectly straight line down the sidewalk. Sometimes, oh boy she gets confused. Yesterday, I think she was looking for a clear patch, and decided that we just had to go across a parking lot to a building! Oh dear! Then I had to bail us out. But she’s learning, and when she makes a mistake, it’s not a dumb one. Her street crossings are still straight as an arrow.

Boots are going to give me nightmares. They’re driving me nuts. I tried one set, and she wouldn’t even bend her legs. I tried another, and she’d walk in them, but they’d just keep falling off. I got another set from the vet, and they’re too complicated for me to figure out! But she seems to need boots, because I think her screwing up is because she doesn’t want to put her paws in the ugly snow and salt goo that’s everywhere, and I can’t blame her. I’ve been putting something on her paws to repel salt, but it just isn’t enough…or maybe she’s stealthily licking it all off. I’ve been catching her at it, and she seems to be doing it less, but the little devil isn’t helping her cause with that. I think I’m getting my just reward for giving mom a hard time about stuff when I was a kid.

I even had someone make me something to put on so if her boots fall off, they’re still hanging from her, and I’m even having issues with that. I just want to put boots on, have them stay on, or not be horribly difficult to adjust, and then we can walk and her feet can be shielded from the winter weather! I just want simplicity! Is that too much to ask?

I finally found a toy that is a true battle for the Trixter. It’s a Goughnut! If you have a dog who chews toys to death, you have to get them this toy. She has been chewing on it, and it hasn’t even shown a mark. I think she’s annoyed with it though, she can’t see any progress. But she can’t be too annoyed with it, she took it to bed with her last night! Damn I wish I could have used my phone’s camera to capture that image.

I really think she’s learning English. No no listen. The other day, I was walking from the apartment to the elevator and said, ah crap. She stopped, looked up at me and turned back a little bit as if to say, “You forgot something?”

It gets better. I said to Steve, “Ok, I have to get dogfood, I have to go to the bank and then the drugstore. Then I wanna catch the bus to go to the mall.” As we were walking down the sidewalk in the general direction of the store where I would get dogfood, she put on the brakes. It was a hard stop. It wasn’t a sort of “we’ve been there before, ya wanna go again?” stop, it was a “We have arrived” kind of stop. Then, on the way back from that stuff, we went to cross the street. Usually, we would be coming home, so we would turn and cross the other way. But she didn’t even try to go that way. She went for the bus stop! We never hit the bus stop from that direction! Man oh man she’s a genius and she amazes me every day!

Speaking of amazing, I was at Steve’s mom’s place this past weekend. We haven’t been there in six months. But she remembered where she used to pee, she remembered the downstairs and the way things were laid out, she remembered everything! Oh, and she didn’t bark once. Last time we were there, there was a lot of barking going on at bad times, like, 3 a.m. when someone came home late, or 5 a.m. when someone had to leave for a shift. No more barking now. Yea!

I think that’s about all the Trixie updates. Well, she may have some things to say. But that’s all I can come up with for now.