Pooh ... The dog-kid had to get up at seven o'clock again and after months of online lessons that always started at ten o'clock, you could really tell that she was tired. Not at all motivated, she went into the garden with Xana so that she could move around. Then we went for a walk - several rounds in the garden. We would really love to go out in the neighborhood, but first of all she needed sufficient vaccination protection. So she had to be well trained here first.
Hey! There is something strange on the paw
Suddenly the dog-kid storms into the house with the Border Collie ladie and shouts: "Mom ... what is Xana having on her paw? That wasn't there yesterday.” I inspect the spot that is shown to me and notice that it really has something weird greenish-bluish between two toes (is that how you call it in dogs?). We're trying to remove it because it was definitely a foreign object. But it looked fused in the skin, so we had to go back to ... The vet. We watched the weird thing with concern and it annoyed Xana incredibly. Was it there yesterday and didn't the vet notice? After a call, the fur nose got an appointment in the afternoon.
This was unlikely because the dog-kid combed and inspected the bitch extensively every day. That was her favorite thing to do with Xana in the boring Covid time: Relaxing and making her look even prettier. Her athletics career which had not even started properly, did not seem to animate in the "idleness" at home. With Xana, relaxing and reading books all day long was over for four hours a day.
The strange thing turns out to be…
When we got to the vet we didn't have to wait at all. Little Xana could go straight into the treatment room. After one look, the vet said “Eso es una garrapata.” What… I didn't know what a garrapata is. Never heard. That was probably the disadvantage of going to the vet here in Asturias ... I didn't use some technical terms of Spanish in everyday life as a German expat in the north of Spain. So I followed up and the vet informed me that I should just wait. After rummaging around, he came around the corner with a pair of scissors-like tweezers. "Garrapata es tick en inglés," he told me. All right! So it was a tick ... ! The tick was removed within a second and with a very calm Border Collie bitch that only cried out once. Then she had to take a pill home.
Where did Xana get the tick?
The whole time I wondered where the tick was coming from. We bought Xana in the middle of nowhere on a mountain. I did the math quickly, and six days had passed since then ... So there was hope that the tick wouldn't be in the garden. To be honest, I'm not a big lawnmower fan and I love having a little longer grass. But the lawn wasn't very long since she's been living with us. So I was really unsure how to behave now. First of all, I decided to cut the lawn very short!
The dog-kid feeds the pill
Back home, the dog-kid sounded concerned that it was a tick and we encouraged Xana to eat properly as the pill should not be eaten on an empty stomach.
Afterwards, the dog-kid gave a treat and tried to give her the pill afterwards. But even a little puppy is not dumb. She rejected the pill right away and pushed the hand away with her nose. "Then I'll give it to you in a different way," claimed the dog-kid with confidence. I opened Xanas mouth and the dog-kid skillfully pushed the unwanted white part in. The puppy showed us disgusted look. Immediately afterwards the dog-kid gave her a treat and that strange-tasting pill was forgotten.
