Twix
Below is the Story of Twix. Parts to be added as they are remembered.
With us since September 7th, 2005
The Story of Twix
Part 1
It
was May of 2005. I just earned my Masters degree and moved up from Texas to live
with my Fiancée in Buffalo. We moved in together in her tiny apartment while we
were waiting to close on our first house. Stressful, yes, but we got through
it. After closing on the house, we moved in towards the end of June. Now
Veronica has brought up the idea now and then of owning a dog but we wanted to
wait until we were living together (basically she didn’t want me to get a dog
without her). I grew up with dogs around the house. We had a toy poodle, Rocky,
while I was a kid (nasty little thing) and then my sister had some dogs while
she lived with us (Claude who would mosey around and Jimmy, a wiener type dog,
short fat and cute). Veronica never had a dog before so this would be a new
experience for her. So we decided to get a dog, but I convinced her to hold off
until I had a job and received my first paycheck. She was in her second year of
medical school and we were living mostly off her loans at the time while I was
looking around.
I had a geology degree but I could not find anywhere that would hire me, either because I was over-qualified or not qualified enough. So eventually I found myself doing credit collections. I know, not the dream job of most Americans, but it paid the bills. So I got the job on August 15th and the first paycheck came in on September 2nd. And true to her word she was at the SPCA before I even got off work. So I show up to the SPCA, with check still in hand and I went to find her. Well she was just finishing up getting the paperwork done (where since I was not there it was all in her name) and we went to go look through the dogs.
The first row had some cute puppies and a lot of barking dogs but nothing that really stood out to us. The second row was more of the same, deafening barking, and jumping dogs. We were starting to get a little discouraged but we kept on walking through. By the time we got to the last row, towards the back, we saw a two year old, short haired, black and white, husky mix, who was not barking and who jumped up on the door and tentatively slid her head into position for us to pet her. Well we just fell in love. We took her outside for a walk and I could tell that she had a playful streak in her, which I was excited for, but she was still very timid in her surroundings so we decided right there to adopt her.
We told the people we wanted Snickers there, they pointed to the dog in the next kennel over and we’re like “noooo, this one” pointing to our dog. And they were like no, “That’s Twix”. Well it turns out that she arrived about 15 minutes before we did to the shelter with a group of dogs from Ohio and they were all named after candy, Snickers, Twix, and Rollo, and the name signs were a little confusing. Well since she was a new arrival she still needed to be spayed and get her vaccines so we had to wait the long Labor Day holiday weekend to take her home. So we placed her back in her kennel and left, getting excited to be new dog owners. On our way out I wished another couple, a father and daughter who were looking around, “good luck”. He said “Thanks, but you took our dog.” She really was the best one there.
Well the surgery took place the next Tuesday on the 6th, and we ended up taking her home on the Sept 7th, still a little woozy and in pain from the surgery and drugs, but she was cute and she was ours.
Part II
So, for the most part Twix acclimated pretty well with us and us
with her. She does not have some of the fantastic stories that Aikman left us
with but she has a few good ones of her own. When we first brought her home it
was immediately evident that we were her saviors. We could not walk out of a
room without her following us wherever we went. She would curl up in the hallway
when we went to the bathroom. She would curl up on the couch when we watched TV.
And that is how she was for pretty much the first several months to the first
year that we had her.
When she first arrived we were told she had come from another pound in Ohio and that she recently had just given birth to puppies. She also just got spaded so she was not in the best of shape. She looked depressed but she still devoted every ounce of love on us that she could. But then Veronica had to go to school and I had to go work and Twix was left home alone. This would not have been such a problem but she had an extreme case of separation anxiety. So we decided that she should spend the day down in the basement. It was a mostly finished basement and had a TV and a couch, so she could lounge around during the day and if she had an accident it was OK because the floor was tile and it would clean up easily. Other than the couple of pillows I lost to separation anxiety nothing bad really happened. She was already house trained so that went off without a hitch. She would freak out when we left and be in a state of utter exuberance when we returned but we slowly convinced her that we would always come back and the freak outs became less and less. She still bounces around when we return, 5 years later, but we have grown accustomed to it, and look forward to it now, a kind of over the top welcome home.
When we got Twix Veronica immediately set out to find clothes to dress her up in. Unfortunately (or fortunately in Twix’s case) she could never find anything large enough to fit a normal size dog. Everything we found came in mini form for all those mini “dogs”. But she did find a jersey that looked like it would fit her. Well Veronica is a bit of a Bill’s nut and the colors matched pretty well so we got it and squeezed it onto her (see picture). Well over the next couple of days we noticed that Twix was acting strange. It couldn’t be the jersey. Why would it be that? Well after I managed to get the jersey off of Twix she was back to her bouncing around self. It turns out the jersey was so small on her it was suffocating her or something so she couldn’t move. Poor dog. Well we reached a compromise and shredded the jersey to a point that Twix could still wear it and it wouldn’t strangle her.
When Twix had to go out we would have to walk her from the side door of the house to the backyard since the gate was about 10 feet from the house. So we would let her out and she would run around, sometimes we would run around with her. And she would stay outside until she was ready to come in. At that point she would stand next to the gate and look for us in the window where we could see her from the kitchen. Well when the weather started to get nicer we would let her out for longer and longer periods of time. And then we started to notice that instead of wanting to come in she would just stand and stair up into the trees at the back of the house (see picture). After watching her do this for a little while she would start to run back and forth along the fence, all the while looking up. We realized she was chasing squirrels that were running along the telephone wires and the trees back there.
So one day we saw in the store a stuffed squirrel. And we thought it would be a perfect gift for her. But we didn’t want to just give it to her. We wanted Twix to think she caught one of the squirrels. So when we got home we placed it in the fence and let her out. Well she ran around for a little while, did her usual search routine around the yard to make sure nothing was out of place, then she noticed it. She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly crept up to the fence. She sniffed it for a second then ripped it out of the fence and shook it around. That was when it started to be her new best friend and carry it around everywhere. Whenever we came home from being out she would run to the door and greet us then she would go fetch the Squirrel to show us. It became her new best friend. Wherever Twix went, Squirrel went. They became inseparable. She would snuggle with it in her sleep (see picture) and she would just carry it around from room to room. All I could ever thing of was Pookie from the Garfield cartoons.
One of the things that is great about Twix is that she loves to
play. She is definitely a fighter as well. So when we fight it is a
no-holds-bar, all out fight. She will snarl and snap and anyone passing by would
think that she is mauling me, but she has never injured me. She will bite your
hand but never bit down. When we first got her Veronica was a little afraid
because she never had a dog before so I showed her that it was OK. Twix was not
going to hurt her. So I put my hand in her mouth and I grabbed onto her lower
jaw. Twix struggled and got my hand off of her but I showed Veronica that it was
no big deal. Pretty quickly she came to be rough housing with Twix just as I do.
About a year after we got her we had to take her in to the vet to
get some blood work done. Well we quickly realized earlier that she was not the
vet kind of dog. She refused to even enter the vet. When I finally coaxed her
into the office, it was a struggle the entire way to the scale and then to the
exam room. When the vet examined her everything was going ok, until he decided
to take a blood sample to test for heartworm. Well even
with 2 nurses and I holding her down we could not take a sample. She would not
hold still. So the doctor gave her some tranquilizers. We waited a little bit
for them to take effect and we tried again, still to no avail. So the vet
decided to give her the good stuff, the kind of stuff that knocks you on your
ass. We waited a little while and after a struggle that she was still able to
put up we finally got the sample. After that we went home and we gave her a
treat for being such a good girl, at which point she just passed out holding the
treat in her mouth (see picture). That is one of the funniest pictures of her
because you can see her eyes are all bloodshot and she doesn’t even have the
energy to eat the treat.
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