“The Many Adventures of Trixie the Wonder Dog”

Chapter One

In which we are introduced to Trixie and her family

Trixie was a thirteen inch tall, sixteen pound, sable and white Sheltie with many outstanding qualities.  She was loyal, as all dogs are, she didn’t bother the food her humans left on the table, she loved to lay at her people’s feet to keep them warm, she was beautiful, she could talk, and she could take the kids in her family on wonderful and amazing adventures!  You may be thinking that it is not normal for a dog to talk or go on adventures with kids, but you would be wrong in your assumption.  All dogs talk, the real question is whether or not the humans are able to listen properly to hear what their dogs are telling them.  All dogs are also able to go on adventures to just about any place their young humans want to go.  All the humans have to do is ask.

Trixie belonged to a family with three young girls and one young boy; Grace, Lily, Jackson (also known as Jack) and Hannah. The boy, Jack, arrived in the family as the third child, but he was bigger than his two oldest sisters, right from the beginning.  Trixie happened to sneak into the nursery at the hospital on the day Jack was born and she saw with her own eyes that he was able to pick his head up, look around, and even ask if it was time to eat yet.  The nurse’s marveled at his size, but they did not understand his question because they were not really fluent in the advanced baby-talk that Jack was already able to speak.  However, everyone could very well see that he was extremely advanced for his age.  Jack’s Mother was fully capable of understanding his request, but she told him it was NOT time to eat yet and instead, he should go run around the nursery and when he was done, it would be time to eat.  Trixie quietly snuck into the nursery and got Jack a snack because she knew they were going to be good friends and would experience many wonderful adventures together.

Now, I know you may not believe this story, but it is indeed true.  One of Trixie’s fine qualities was that she could not lie.  Therefore, you may believe everything that you read within the pages of this book. 

Jack’s Mom and Dad brought him home from the hospital and he and Trixie immediately formed a strong bond.  You may be thinking that is the most preposterous thing you have ever read since reading that Trixie snuck into the hospital the night Jack was born.  However, I assure you this is true.  Even though Jack was just a baby, Trixie was able to communicate with him.  It wasn’t difficult, because you see, when babies are born, they are the smartest that they will ever be in their entire lives.  They know everything there is to know about how animals and humans can communicate.  Babies are born  knowing things such as trigonometry and whether or not that sentence has a dangling participle in it or not.  They can speak any language there ever was, including ancient, dead languages and they can even write in hieroglyphics and crop circles.  Here’s the problem:  As babies grow up, they lose their ability to remember all of these things because they are too busy learning how to actually speak a language, grow kneecaps and later to walk, or in Jack’s case, run, since he never walked anywhere.  Also, he jumped.  A lot.  He jumped up and down all of the time.  But I digress.  The business of growing up is very hard.  It is very taxing to the body and brain and unfortunately, babies are left having to relearn things that they once had a firm grasp on, just because they had to learn to speak in understandable words and to ambulate.

Now, Grace was just the opposite of Jack.  She was the oldest of the clan and she was skeptical of Trixie’s abilities.  Even when she experienced them first hand, she pretended not to remember that she had been on an adventure when she was supposed to have been in bed asleep.  Usually, she said the oldest always gets blamed for everything, so it was better to act as if she did not know what the rest of the kids were talking about in reference to the adventures when they were around their parents.  She used this tactic to throw them off the trail.  As the oldest, she felt somewhat responsible for her siblings and she tried to reign in the ridiculous claims the younger three constantly made to their parents and sometimes complete strangers.  Once, when they were at a grocery store and Jack claimed to an utter stranger that the family dog had taken them to Washington DC the night before, she completely fabricated a story about how their Dad had allowed Jack to roll off the changing table when he was small and ever since then, he had been given to making up ridiculous stories in regards to frolicking about the country, indeed the world and sometimes even space with the family dog in tow and largely unsupervised by a responsible adult.  Or rather, that the family dog towed Jack about the universe as if it was her personal playground.  Either way, people usually looked upon poor Jack in utter sympathy as if he wasn’t really capable of knowing the truth after the unfortunate Changing Table Incident.

On the other hand, Hannah, thoroughly loved, Trixie the Wonder Dog and was always ready and willing to go traipsing about the country with Jack, Lily, and Grace in search of the next adventure.  She had been to Saturn to check out the rings, whitewater rafting on the Colorado River, and they had all gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel.  That was her favorite adventure!  It was so fun even if she did hurt her shoulder and had to have surgery to repair her broken clavicle.  There was quite a lot of story-telling to keep from getting in trouble with their parents on that one, for sure.  They were lucky it all worked out so that they were able to keep the true identity of Trixie the Wonder Dog a secret from their parents.  To a certain extent, Hannah was a girl version of Jack.  If there was an adventure to be found, the two of them would find it.  And if there wasn’t an adventure nearby, then they were not above creating their own, such as the time they went sledding off the roof of the house.  Hannah liked to brag to Jack that she was the one who sustained a broken bone already, something that he had yet to accomplish.

Lily was the reporter of the family.  When Trix showed up to take the kids on yet another outrageous adventure, she grabbed her camera, her journal, her favorite pen, and ran out the door.  Wherever they went, Lily was right there snapping pictures and writing about it.  Years later, she would publish these adventures on her blog, but at the time of the adventures, no one even knew what a blog was.  Lily liked to know how things worked so one day Trixie the Wonder Dog took them all on an adventure through the body.  They visited the nervous system, the digestive system, the circulatory system and the eye all in one night.  Now, I know you probably think this is at least the fourth or fifth preposterous thing you have read in these few short paragraphs, but I assure you, that all of this is true.  You must remember that Trixie cannot lie, and a picture is worth a thousand words.  Therefore, there are at least fifty pictures of these adventures for a total of 50,000 words written about the adventures these kids had with Trixie the Wonder Dog.

The adventures started out innocently enough.  The truth is, Trixie was a wonderful companion to the kids so if she heard one of them stir during the night she would immediately jump on the bed and lick the child’s face until they awoke and realized whatever had caused them to stir was just a bad dream.  Most of the time she did this even before the parents realized there was a potential problem which is why they always thought the kids were such great sleepers and indeed on occasion, bragged upon the sleeping abilities of their offspring.  At any rate, upon realizing all was well, and no monsters were crawling out from under the bed or the closet, whichever child had been disturbed, would ask Trixie to tell them a story so that they could settle into a restful and peaceful evening. 

Now, if Trixie had any flaw, it was this:  Once she got started on a story, she would sometimes get so excited that the kids would have to remind her to keep it down or else their parents would be up to investigate the noise.  When this happened, Trixie would pull out her trusted and rusted, I might add, reading glasses, slip them on, slide them about halfway down her nose and intone, “Now, young lad and lassies, where was I in our latest adventure?”  This never failed to bring about peals of laughter with kids rolling around and (sometimes off!) the bed in fits of mirth with tears of hilarity rolling down their cheeks.  After a few minutes of this, Grace would say, “If you guys don’t want Mom and Dad up here, you better stop this racket!”  Trixie would then clear her throat and put her glasses away, because really, why does a dog need glasses?  After all, she wasn’t reading them a story, she was telling them a story and one does not need glasses for storytelling, unless one is using the glasses for the sole purpose of extracting great gales of laughter from one’s audience.

Having accomplished the goal of causing a ruckus amongst the youngsters, Trixie the Wonder Dog would say, “Where would you like to go today?

This always brought on an extended period of jumping on the beds doing such trampoline exercises as butt drops, knee drops and the occasional near suicide dive while they excitedly whispered amongst themselves as they tried to come to an agreement as to what the next adventure should be. Now, we all know that children cannot whisper if their lives depended on it.  When kids attempt this, it always comes out in a strangled voice, half stage shout, half normal voice, but never a whisper.  When there are four kids involved in attempting to whisper at the same time, and reach a mutual agreement about something exciting that they are about to do, they might as well have a microphone clipped to their pajamas.  While their lives did not depend up on whispering, it was prudent for them to be as quiet as possible so as not to stir up any suspicious ideas in their parents that something may be amiss in the household.  You know, such as the family pet that suddenly has superhero qualities, can talk, and likes to imitate one of the great, great uncles by placing reading glasses upon her nose and intoning phrases such as lads and lassies, which she picked up from her ancestors while they were still stationed upon the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

It is important to understand that Trixie was a first generation Sheltie to the United States.  Her relatives were all born and raised on the Shetland Islands and spent their days herding sheep and their nights telling stories of great and wondrous adventures to their Scottish owners children.  Trixie’s Mother, Honeycomb, came to the US aboard an airplane that she insisted she helped fly.  No one knows if this is true or not, but Trixie could not tell a lie, therefore if her Mother was unable to lie as well, then this story is probably true.  Family legend also recounts that Trixie’s Mother had Wonder Dog powers as well, which also lends credence to the fact that she probably flew the plane over to the United States.

Once Honeycomb was safely back on the ground, she hopped the next train and had many adventures herself while riding the rails.  She regaled her daughter, with these stories which is how this talent of storytelling and adventure seeking was ignited in Trixie the Wonder Dog.  However, at some point in a dog’s life, she longs to settle down with one family, maybe have 16 or 20 children of her own and generally live out the rest of her life laying upon a nice fur rug in front of the fireplace and licking the toes of her human as she reads the latest book about a dog who drags its humans about on adventure after adventure.  That is exactly what Honeycomb was thinking when she decided to hop off the train on Utah Road.

Word on the train was that there was a nice lady on Utah Road who was the best cook on the rails.  She enjoyed feeding the hobos dinner and she never turned anyone away.  Honeycomb thought this was probably a good place to stop and see if she might be able to get something to eat and maybe stay a night or two in front of the fire.  The railroad was about a half a mile away from the house she was looking for.  She figured since she had been travelling for days, flying planes, conducting trains, she could probably handle a short walk.  She was a dog after all. 

Honeycomb picked her way down the road, her nose twitching at the delightful smells emanating from the big, kettle that had been placed over the fire outside.  There were a few hobos sitting around waiting for the big pot of chili to finish cooking.  Honeycomb pulled up a respectable distance from the food since even though she was able to fly planes and conduct trains, she knew some people did not like sharing the dinner table with dogs.  She didn’t really understand those types of people, but she wouldn’t make a stand for equal rights for canines on this day.  She was hungry!  And that food smelled good!

The lady who lived at the house saw her and said, “Oh Lassie, what are you doing here?  You look so cold and hungry.  Let me get you a bowl of food.”

That was just fine with Honeycomb.  She decided the nice food lady could call her whatever she wanted to as long as she was going to get something to eat.  Honeycomb remembered her manners and ate all ladylike instead of wolfing down food like she had seen other dog breeds do, like Great Danes.  Have you ever seen them eat?  Put the food down, they inhale it in three minutes flat and then go burp in their person’s face.  Honeycomb thought that was completely archaic and Neanderthal-ish-like.  She was of a noble breed and she would never stoop to that type of behavior.

After she finished her meal, the nice lady gave her a bowl of water and then oh joy!  She invited her into the house!  Just as Honeycomb suspected, there was a great, roaring fire and a fluffy rug lying in front of it.  She longed to go lay down, but there were many magnificent smells in this house and she needed to acquaint herself with them first.  So, she set about to sniffing every square inch of the house while the nice lady talked to her about the hobos outside.  She told Honeycomb that she could stay as long as she wanted to.  Eventually, she ended the day curled up on the fluffy rug, where she slept until morning.