Pixie...

pix·ie or pix·y...A fairylike or elfin creature, especially one that is mischievous; a playful sprite. adj. Playfully mischievous.

It’s time to take a break from studying…my head is swimming in trying to remember all the different situations and distinguishing contexts in order to correctly use para and por, ser and estar, saber and conocer as well as all the other things I keep trying to cram in to this already-too-full mind of mine.

I need to “lighten up” a bit this afternoon. Studying is serious business and I not only need to take a break, I need to make myself laugh. And right now, the easiest way to do that is to tell you about our thoroughly enjoyable house guest. This particular blog entry is not mission related in any way, shape or form. But it’s a good picture of how one aspect of our life has been this week. We still have Susanna’s dog, Pixie, with us. She’s so much company and we absolutely adore her, but she’s also a handful at times. We’ve spent this week being trained to read Pixie “signs” which sometimes can be very subtle. Although, she’s been very good at waiting to get outside to take care of her personal needs.

Susanna had warned us that Pixie had become a chewer…she wasn’t kidding. When Susanna brought her over, Pixie’s bed was wet as Susanna said she had dragged it out in to the rain earlier that day. So, I took it to the utility room to let it dry in the pila (our concrete sink), and noticed it had several small holes around the padded rim. I smiled to myself, thinking that those small, little holes must have been the chewing that Susanna mentioned and honestly, didn’t give it much more thought. I put the pillow on the floor that Susanna had also brought for her since her bed was wet and Pixie quickly settled in.

Within an hour, Pixie had quietly managed to chew a whole in her pillow and apparently had given it a good shake because as I walked out of the kitchen, our living room looked like a chicken had exploded! There were feathers everywhere! So, I scolded her and took her pillow away from her, putting it up out of reach on the top bunk bed in the front bedroom. Pixie sat on the floor, looking up longingly at her pillow with the saddest looking little eyes! Feeling badly that she had lost her comfy pillow to sleep on and that her bed still wasn’t dry, I caved in and gave her an old green towel which was meant for her to lie on. She quickly and methodically proceeded to put about a jillion holes in it. Pixie is a small dog but apparently, she has some pretty mighty canines because she aerated that towel in nothing flat.

Being the eternal optimist that I am, (actually more like a slow learner), I also gave her a very scary looking stuffed doll that we had here in the house (I won’t even go in to why we have that doll) for her to carry around, thinking it might be comforting…although Pixie wasn’t acting much like she needed any comfort…just a good chew bone. She carried the doll as far as the living room where she proceeded to chew off its foot and pull the stuffing out. The doll, looking even more frightening with a foot missing and large tufts of fur-like hair pulled out, has joined the deflated pillow on the top bunk.

Jim gave her a donated tennis ball to play with in hopes that would keep her busy and be a little more indestructible. The ball has been a great hit for playing fetch and thus far, has not been demolished. Unfortunately, it hasn’t seemed to satisfy her chewing urge though. We found that out through another unfortunate good-intention-gone-awry incident.

We have recently had some very strong thunder storms moving through our area every few days or so. Pixie is terrified of thunder and the thunder here seems to be magnified in intensity and duration. It doesn’t just rumble in the distance, it rumbles at great length, right through the entire house, shaking everything, including Pixie. A few days after she arrived, we had a particularly strong storm with lightning bolts striking all around us. I have to admit, Pixie wasn’t the only one shaking that day. It was the worst storm we had been in to date. I grabbed a blanket off the bunk bed to wrap around Pixie to try to calm her down. I’ve never seen a dog shake so violently. The storm finally passed, leaving our neighbors without electricity and Pixie exhausted. She quickly fell sound asleep, all wrapped up in her blanket cocoon. She looked peaceful enough, so I headed off to the kitchen to fix supper.

When I came back in to tell Jim that supper was ready, I saw that Pixie had woken up, completely refreshed by her nap, and full of the need to decimate something. I don’t know what she was thinking other than she must have felt the need to avenge her earlier terror by ripping apart the blanket. Needless to say, it no longer will serve its original intended purpose for us but is now acting as a covering for the ugly maimed doll and poor punctured pillow. I have let her keep the holey towel.

Her little bed finally dried and when I got it, I watched to make sure there wouldn’t be any more chewing incidents. But with life being as it is, I wasn’t able to stand guard round the clock. Meals needed to be fixed, laundry done, showers taken, etc. And foolishly, I turned my back on Pixie. Did you know the padding around the edges of those little dog beds is made of big fluffy wads of fiberfill which is easily removed by a deviously determined little dog? The one-footed, patchy haired doll now sleeps on the top bunk, covered with a holey blanket and snuggled down in Pixie’s not-so-fiber”full” bed. The top bunk has turned in to a haven for those items that have suffered the wrath of Pixie.

So, during the day, Pixie has been relegated to be happy with her tennis ball and the now, very light and airy green towel. For whatever reason, when it’s bed time, she will lay in her bed without chewing on it and peacefully go to sleep. I guess her aggression towards inanimate objects only manifests itself during daylight hours. Thinking that I had Pixie-proofed the house, I was baffled when I saw little pieces of hard, white rubber all over the floor. I couldn’t figure out what on earth they were. Following the fragmented trail, I discovered Pixie happily shredding one of our doorstops, wagging her tail furiously the whole time. Of course, I took it away from her, scolded her and did what with it? Yep. Put it right back under our door. I don’t think I can ever say “dumber than a dog” again.

For the last few days, there has been a great battle of the wills between dog and woman re: these silly doorstops. She hasn’t touched the dark brown ones, but all of the white ones have been well-gnawed and reshaped. When my girls and even my grandchildren, were little, I refused to put things away, believing they needed to learn what was permissible to play with and what wasn’t. If something was truly valuable and irreplaceable, of course I would remove it from reach, but otherwise, I figured they were smart kids and would learn how to live in a real house and not a giant toy store. I guess I assumed that same line of thinking could be applied to Pixie. You know that phrase, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”? I’m afraid it’s true. See, I haven’t yet learned to pick up the white doorstops and add them to the top bunk, preferring instead to be on Diligent Doorstop Duty, guarding the rubber remnants in hopes of winning this battle with this red-coated, playfully mischievous little sprite. What an aptly named dog.