Last Updated on: 6th May 2016, 06:36 am
You know what’s sad? This year, I failed to blog about Trix on any of her big days, which is a horrible shame. I made a promise to myself that I would always have a post up about her marking each of her dog days and birthdays and anniversaries of her coming home with me. And this year, I failed. So, today I’m going to write three posts about her, one in honour of each event so at least I would have made up for it. Let’s start with one in honour of dog day, which was March 21.
At least in this case, I have something I can blame for my not posting. I’d just finished a pretty stressful week, mostly because I was worried about my Trixter, and things were starting to look normal again, and I just wanted to relax and enjoy the day. Here’s what was happening.
This spring, Trix was acting completely out of character. When the seasons change, she’s always a bit sniffy and needs to be reminded that “you’re working, chief,” but this was insane. One day, I was at a lady’s house, and Trix was laying under the low coffee table while we all snacked on little doughnuts and finger food and stuff. When we got up to go, Trix stuck her head onto the table and got a tim bit! I didn’t even feel it! I was mortified! I got it back, and apologized, and then the little goof went for another one! The first one, although embarrassing, I can chalk up to her being a brat, but grabbing the second one was just plain weird.
Then one day, we crossed a street, and there was still some weird snowy spots especially at curb edges. I went over something that felt like that weird snow, and then was chuckin’ along. Suddenly I realized that we were not on the sidewalk at all! We were next to it, but still on the road! This weirded me out too.
I also noticed other lack of focus problems. She nearly mowed down a group of people instead of seeing a way around them. She would be walking along and then go for a pole. She just wasn’t working like a guide dog, and it was making me nervous.
Her eating stuff weirdness continued, to the point where she was trying to eat things that weren’t even food, with her gentle leader on. This reminded me of the day when Babs was trying to eat pieces of brick off the ground near the end, and as we all found out, Babs was not well. Babs also had the tendancy to slam me into parking meters and things. So when all that fit together, I started to, well, freak out.
After a particularly bad day, I went to the guide dog email list I’m on for help. I was pretty wacked out. They eventually thought maybe it was thyroid issues. They said thyroid problems can make a dog try and eat stuff and lose focus and do stuff like I described. Plus, those couple of pounds came back, even though the food was somewhat cut and we were walking more, and they said thyroid can make them gain weight. They said hit the vet, but call Chuck, the guy who’s come to see me before. So I did.
Thankfully, the thyroid stuff came back normal. They said there would have to be a more significant weight gain than a couple of pounds for it to be thyroid, but they tested it anyway, and all is well in the thyroid department.
When Chuck called me back, he said something really wacky. He said he’s had an abnormally high number of grads saying that their dogs are super insane due to spring fever. He told me to use the gentle leader every day for a few weeks and just keep an eye on things.
The funny thing is as soon as I took Trix to the vet for testing, she started to shape up! What the hell? But even the vet said a lot of animals have been acting really strange this spring. She said she was driving into work one day, and there was a goose in the middle of an insanely busy road, just sitting there honking at cars.
So, although part of me is still worried that something may be lurking, all signs point to spring fever ramped up. I have dealt with spring fever. This was a whole new level of the stuff.
So Trix, belated happy dog day. It’s a month belated, but what am I gonna do? I spent the actual dog day just being thankful that nothing was wrong with you physically. Ya gave me a scare, ya little rat.