When we did anything that particularly pleased her, she searched through her pile of toys, selecting this and that one but discarding each after consideration, until after a couple of minutes she arrived at the perfect stuffed plush animal for her purpose. In moments like this, it was always a plush toy, never a tug rope or a ball. Having made her choice, she brought it to us and placed it at our feet, not to induce us to play, but to say, This is one of my favorite things. I want you to have it because you have been so kind to me. Then she settled down and sighed, and sometimes went to sleep.
The surgeon told us that Trix would need six weeks to recover from elbow surgery. During the first three weeks of convalescence, he wanted her to be crated day and night.
We understood the need to prevent her from running or jumping, but we knew our free-spirited Trickster, who had rarely been crated and never by us, wouldn’t do well in extreme confinement. Because our desks are large, U-shaped affairs, we got permission to contain her within the work space by barricading the end with a four-foot-high, sectional pet fence that could be arranged in any configuration.
She spent part of the day with Gerda, part of the day with me. At night, the sectional gate could be arranged in a square, to form a cage, in which we put her bed and her water dish, giving her much more room than a crate.
During the day, Trix didn’t have to wear the head cone, not only because she remained under our constant observation, but also because Gerda invented a clever garment that discouraged licking or biting at the surgical stitches. She took apart a couple of her tube tops and resewed them into snugly fit leggings. Because the tube-top material was stretchy and sort of ribbed-quilted, the legging was easy to pull on and thick enough to provide protection, covering Trixie’s shaved forelimb from pastern to upper arm. I’m not sure this would work with a dog less cooperative than Trix. I think the legging prevented her from worrying the incision in part because chewing through it was too difficult but also because she understood the purpose of it and wanted to please her mom. She looked totally fab, as well.
At night, we didn’t trust in the legging alone, and we needed to put the head cone on her. Dogs despise the cone. It’s uncomfortable and confining, but they also realize it makes them look silly and is an affront to their dignity. When the cone went on, Trixie accepted it first with an expression of exasperation but then with a pitiful look that said, What have I done to you that I deserve this?
The first three weeks following surgery, Trix was not supposed to do stairs. As our offices and the master bedroom were on the third floor of that Harbor Ridge house, I had to get her down to the front door, on the second floor, four times a day to take her outside to toilet.
Because the house stood on a narrow lot and because the stairs-especially the back ones-were steep, the architect included an elevator. It was small, perhaps five feet square, cable-driven rather than hydraulic. I’m not claustrophobic, and I don’t have a fear of elevators, but I did not like that small, wood-paneled cab. The motor that drove the cables was bolted between rafters in the attic, and the entire assemblage rattled and creaked and groaned and even issued curious animal shrieks while in operation, as if in addition to the electric motor, a couple of apes were required to haul on the cables and were not happy about their job. Gerda refused to ride in it, period. Until Trixie’s surgery, we used the lift only as a freight elevator, to move heavy boxes.
During Trixie’s convalescence, Gerda broke her rule against taking suicidal risks in claustrophobic conveyances and, when I was not available, accompanied our golden girl on the harrowing journey between the third and second floors. Love conquers all.
At the time, Trixie was still shy of her fifth birthday and feared neither fireworks nor thunder, nor anything. She didn’t fear the elevator, either, but she didn’t like it. The first few times she rode in it with me, she kept looking around, trying to discern where all the noises were coming from and what they might portend. Soon she figured out that most of the tumult arose from overhead, whereafter she watched the ceiling with the obvious expectation that a disaster of one kind or another would at any moment befall us.
After half a week, riding down four times and up four times each day, Trix began occasionally to balk at another confinement in that contraption. When I opened the door, she sat down in the hallway in what we called her “bucket-bottom” posture. She weighed little more than sixty pounds, but when she parked her butt and did not want to enter that elevator, she might as well have weighed as much as a bucket full of lead shot. She was immovable.
I could lure her into the elevator with a tasty cookie, but that seemed deceptive. I could hope to outwait her-although she had the patience of Job, while I had the patience of a two-year-old. I could scold her, but considering her condition, I didn’t have the heart for that. Besides, she was right: The elevator was a coffin-size Titanic on a vertical voyage to an iceless doom.
We reached a compromise. On one of our four daily trips, now and then on two of them, I carried her down and up the stairs, and the rest of the time, she rode without pulling the bucket-bottom trick on me.
The surgeon specified that she should walk only a hundred feet to and from each toilet during the first two weeks, two hundred feet during the third week. I tried to explain Trixie’s toilet tao, but I saw by the look in his eyes that he heard the shrieking violins that accompanied the slashing knife in Psycho. I imagined being committed against my will to a mental ward where inevitably I would find myself in the company of X, who would have a list of a thousand people to whom I should send free books and invitations to party at our beach house. I said, “Yes, sir. A hundred feet. No problem.”
Using a short leash, maintaining a slow pace, I walked Trixie to the neighbor’s yard, an extra fifty feet. Otherwise, she would have tried to hold in her poop for the duration, and eventually we would have had a catastrophe that would make a plummeting elevator with screaming apes on the roof seem like a tea party.
In the fourth and fifth weeks, we were required to continue confining her, though she was allowed ten- and then fifteen-minute walks. Through the fourth week, Trixie endured these restrictions and indignities with higher spirits than I would have maintained in her situation, but then she fell into a depression. A depressed dog is more terrible than an epically constipated dog building toward a blow. They are by nature exuberant, merry creatures. We could not bear the sight of our elfin Trix so downcast that she spent the day in a sad-eyed listless detachment. Her tail didn’t wag. No squeaking plush toy could engage her. When we rolled a ball to her, she let it bump against her snout and made no effort to seize it, evidently because she knew that she couldn’t run off with it and tease us into pursuing her. Short Stuff was so disconsolate that even food couldn’t rouse a grin from her, and she ate mechanically, without enthusiasm.
On Thursday, as we were coming up on our week-five Friday appointment with Trixie’s surgeon, I called him to report on her mental state and to ask him to consider if we might be able to take her out to dinner with us on the weekend. I explained that there was a Swedish restaurant where the owners were dog lovers and welcomed us on their small patio. Trixie was fond of Gustaf, the partner who ran the front end of the business, and when we ate there, we ordered her a serving of little Swedish meatballs. We could park close to the place, lift her in and out of the Explorer, and walk her on a short leash. The patio was small and quiet, with little chance anything would happen there to excite her into injuring herself. Our girl needed a spirit-lifting excursion.