THAT NEVER LET HER DOWN TRIXIE AND THE VILLAGE ANIMALS

By: Nelly Roodt

Trixie, or Pickle as she is now fondly called, is alive and well and living in nirvana. This is all thanks to Stanford Animal Welfare Society (SAWS), the Village Vet Clinic in Hermanus, and Trixie’s foster-guardians, including Eril Wiehahn who offered Craniosacral Therapy (CST), free of charge and the many other dear hearts and kind people who donated generously towards her recovery.

On a sweltering hot day in mid-January, a pedestrian spotted a small body with a mangled head lying on the tar on the corner of Quick and Bezuidenhout Streets. Neil Bilson and his wife, Trudy, rushed to the rescue. Trudy gathered the Jack Russel in her arms, no matter the blood pouring from the wounds. The injured victim gazed into her eyes for the entire trip to the vet in Hermanus.

Stanford WhatsApp group honed in on her predicament at the speed of the internet. Trixie became the January’s newsmaker of the month on that platform.

Poor Trixie was in a bad way and had sustained a broken jaw and lost one eye. The Stanford Animal Welfare Society (SAWS) appealed to the public for donations to cover the vet bills, and within two days there were sufficient funds to pay for all treatment, hospitalisation, and planned plastic surgery. On her discharge, Wendy and Gill Gauntlet offered their home as a revival haven.

Enter Eril, a CST practitioner, who had settled in the village recently. She treated Trixie twice. CST is a gentle, non-invasive form of massage or bodywork that relieves compression in the bones, and realigns the head, sacrum and spinal column. It is said to be equally effective on people and animals.

Trixie’s healing was extraordinary following CST, Wendy commented. “She just turned. She became a normal dog. Playing, running around ... If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I would not have believed it.”

Dixie (Sarah Dickson) then adopted her. “My daughters, Maggie Lou and Lilly Rose and I, renamed her Pickle as we couldn’t have a Dixie and a Trixie in the house, and she had really gotten herself into quite a pickle, so her new name seemed appropriate. We love her endlessly, and she’s an esteemed member of the family now.”

Joy still does come along and surprise us.