A Big Little Life

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