Rough Week Ahead

Dixie in her normal habitat - under a blanket

That photo there - that's my sister.  My mother's constant companion for the past 12 or so years, Dixie Lynn Adams.  She was a rescue and the rescue place maintained that she was a pure-bred dachshund, but in her prime, she had a four-foot vertical leap, so I suspect there may have been some south of the border influence.  We don't talk about it, though. We just love her the way she is.  

She is definitely a dog with a personality.  I'm sure that at one point, she was a puppy, but she's been a crone so long that I can't really remember her puppyhood. She was born to be a crone - set in her ways, sure that she's right, ruler of the roost.  She even had making grumpy old woman noises down pat (and there's nothing more disturbing than hearing "gruntgrowlgruntgroan" coming from about a foot off the floor in your bedroom around midnight - it was just Dixie making her rounds, ensuring the safety of the family and the lack of any available unsnacked-upon food in the house.)

She put Mom through a scare a couple of years ago, when she lost her right eye to glaucoma, but it didn't slow her down.  She just accepted it as part of her pirate personae and kept on grumbling on.  But now, I think she's finally hit the end of the road.  For the past three or four months, she's been having trouble eating, and she's been losing sight in her good eye.  Now this past week, she's been confused (she got lost under the dining room table, unable to find her way out from the legs), and disoriented.  Mostly, though, she just seems to be frightened, and we think it's time to release her soul back to the universe.  We're going to try to give her a good send-off, though.