For our late afternoon walk, around 4:30, I usually take
Olive behind the townhouses on the south and western ends of the complex we
live in. There is a field beyond the western end that seems to be one of her
favorite pooping spots. We also go behind a townhouse where two animal-loving
ladies, Kim and Joy, live. Olive will stop there at their back deck looking for
one of them to come out and throw a tennis ball for her to chase. Olive seems
to really like them; I sometimes have a heck of a time getting her to move on
if Kim and Joy are not home, or if they don’t come out. Olive is especially
stubborn if the back door is open.
A few weeks back Joy took a video of Olive chasing the ball
that Kim threw. Please comment so that I will know if you were or were not able
to play the video.
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I make a point of brushing Olive every day. People often
comment about how soft and shiny her coat is. I thought I was doing a fairly
good job until yesterday. I left Olive at Candlewick while I went north to
Massachusetts for a fiddle lesson. It had been some four months since Olive’s
last bath, so I arranged for the groomer to give her one.
Fiddle lessons are usually on Tuesday afternoons, and I have
a group of friends that typically meets on Tuesday nights for supper just north
of Hartford. Since it makes little sense to fight the Hartford traffic on the
way home and fight it again to get to supper, my usual Tuesday routine after
dropping Olive off at Candlewick is to eat a sandwich at a small shopping mall
food court on the way to my fiddle lesson, go for my lesson, then relax with
coffee and a magazine at a café somewhere afterward before driving to supper. My
sister is very helpful to pick up her “niece” before Candlewick closes and drop
her off at home. I usually call around 6:00 to check up on Olive.
My sister reported that Olive had been bathed, got her usual
glowing report from the staff, but that the groomer had noticed some matting
problems. I make a point of brushing Olive every day, but the groomer noticed
significant matting on her rear end, where I seldom brush. The groomer offered
to shave it, but I decided to see what I could do to untangle her. When I got
home it didn’t take long to find a large clump of matted fur under Olive’s
tail. I didn’t think that I could untangle that no matter how long I worked at
it, so I tried cutting off a little of the clump at a time with a pair of
scissors. I figured that whatever I cut off would grow back after a while. This
morning I found a smaller clump and did the same thing. It looked like quite a
bit of hair in the wastebasket, but I cannot see any difference looking at her.
It seems that I got all of the matting, but I will have to be careful to brush
that area regularly, even though Olive is not all that fond of it (though she
was well behaved and patient while I worked with the scissors).
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Olive seems to be of two minds about getting her teeth
brushed. She seems to like the taste of the chicken flavored toothpaste, but is
not very happy about my putting my fingers in her mouth. I get a few teeth
every day, which I figure is better than nothing. Perhaps that and a daily “Denta-stick”
(a doggie treat that claims to clean teeth) will allow her to keep her teeth
into old age.
