A Big Little Life

For almost nine years, Trixie went to their office for medical attention and also once a week to be bathed and groomed by Heidi, for whom she was always quick to present her belly in greeting. Often when we went to pick up Trixie, she was not in the holding area at the back of the facility, but roamed free with the women who worked up front at the receiving station. A couple of years later, Heidi told us that she didn’t cage our girl after a bath because by her presence she calmed other dogs that were nervous about being bathed.

On our first visit, we were amused when the receptionist said, “Dr. Whitaker, Trixie Koontz is here for her appointment.” Trixie was now Trixie Koontz, officially a part of the family.

A joyful dog elicits from you a long list of nicknames. For a while I occasionally called her TK, but that was soon supplanted by Furface, Short Stuff, Love Puppy, Trix, Trickster, and others.

For the CNN interview, TK was super-fluffed, and throughout the experience, she remained properly unimpressed that she had become part of a celebrity family.

Weeks prior to the Pinnacle interview, the producer spoke with me by telephone, walking me through the subjects they might want to discuss. Everything went smoothly until he said, “And because yours is basically a sedentary profession, we’d like to get some footage of you and Gerda engaged in colorful leisure activities.”

I explained that aside from having taken six years of ballroom-dancing lessons, we had not done anything colorful. In fact, we strove to avoid the colorful in favor of the comfortable and the safe. We did not sky-dive, wrestle bears, charm snakes, or ride a motorcycle in tandem while wearing horned Viking helmets.

Television thrives on color and movement, so we were at a crisis point. After much mulling, I suggested that Pinnacle accompany Gerda and me to Canine Companions for Independence, at its Oceanside campus, because the organization was such an important part of our lives and would offer the producer all the color he needed. Besides, I am always trying to get CCI publicity that will bring them more donations. The producer was baffled and could not imagine what would be visually interesting about assistance dogs and a bunch of people in wheelchairs. He agreed to go with us to Oceanside on the second morning but “just for an hour.”