Friday, January 16, 2009
Sol has been making her rounds and trying out all the dog beds in the house. Surprisingly, she keeps coming back a little cat sack / cat bed that we got for Cupid (which Cupid shows her appreciation for by completely ignoring the snugly bed). She gravitates towards the cat sack when I am milling about and she can’t really get comfortable because I keep moving from room to room and she feels compelled to follow me.
Henry, on the other hand, believes the cat sack is one big stuffed toy. On several occasions he has ran over to it and started dragging it about the house until he finds an open dog bed. Once there he will chew on the rim of the cat sack.
Cupid may not like the bed, but at least the pugs have found a few uses for it.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Luna & Sol soaked up the rays while we read the paper Saturday morning on the lanai. Don’t you just love how Luna is sitting? What a lady!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Many of you have noticed that we have a very pug friendly decor going on in the living room. The furniture is about a close of a match to the fawn color as you can get and the carpet throughout most of the house is a light shade. It is no coincidence that the house decor is made up of the majority of these colors. I really am crazy enough to use the pug friendly colors so that the pug fur flying about the house does not show quite as bad. The fur is there and you will notice it, but at least it won’t be the first thing you notice when you walk in the door. It also buys me some time in between cleanings because, trust me, domestic goddess I am not.
Well, Sol is a pug, but she isn’t fawn. I have been having a very good laugh about that ever since she stepped foot into our house. Please don’t misunderstand me, never for one second did I hesitate to welcome her into the house. I would never let something as little as her fur change how I feel about this little darling. I just find it amusing. It’s like she has been sent to me as a sign - a sign that I need to run the vacuum a little more often. 
But all is not lost. There are other areas of the house, the Sol fits in quite perfectly. I have not seen one hair of hers on the black throw rugs in the kitchen for example. And the guest bedroom, where she is laying in the picture above, has black carpet and only seems to be full of Benjamin, Henry & Luna’s hair.
The good news in all this is that the sound of the vacuum does not bother her. Heck, it barely even disturbs her sleep.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Sol has been with us for one week and 2 days now and were are starting to get a good feel for her personality. I can say that she most definitely came to our house pre-spoiled, which perhaps is one of the biggest differences between her and Luna’s arrivals. By the way Sol acts, she was most definitely very loved and doted on at one point in her life. She loves to be pet and has mastered the head nudge of the hand if you even think about not petting her for one second. She is very much like Henry in that regard.
Sol is somewhere between 8-10 years old and she operates on a completely different pace than Benjamin, Henry & Luna. She has shown no interest in playing with Benjamin, Henry or Luna even though Luna has tried to egg her on several times. She prefers to spend her days lounging about, getting in as much petting as she possibly can. If you have an open lap she will gladly take it, although, she is more than happy to lay in a dog bed in my office while I am working. She will follow you from room to room, always keeping you in her sights. Which makes me feel bad because I am forever moving about the house and it seems like as soon as she gets comfy I am off to the next task and she has to get up. There have been a few times when she has fallen into a deep sleep and did not notice me leave the room (I don’t think she hears very well). She hates it when this happens as she has to make a dash through the house to try and find me.
She doesn’t jump up on anything and she will not jump down from anything either. Surprisingly, this has been one of the harder things for me to get used to. I can barely keep the boys & Luna from bouncing off the walls, so I am forever getting comfy on the couch, having the other pugs settle around me and then looking down and seeing this sad, little face staring up at me asking to come up on the couch. The worst part is once she is on the couch and I get up I frequently forget to put her on the floor. And since she follows me everywhere, she immediately starts to whine and make monkey noises and looks at me as if to say, “Woman! Get me down from here!”
The other great thing is she is potty trained. Although, you do have to keep an eye on her and pick up on her cues quickly as she can’t really hold it very long.
She gets along with Benjamin, Henry & Luna very well. She is more on the submissive side which seems to be a good fit for the pack. So far, she much prefers to cuddle with people over other pugs and when no lap is available she usually picks a dog bed and lays by herself. Luna and Benny have joined her on a few occasions and she doesn’t seem to mind, however, she hasn’t sought out their company yet. This may very well change over time. I think she is used to be an only dog.
Overall, she is an extremely well behaved little girl. She is not the least bit shy and she is very smart - like the too smart for her own good kind of smart.
Her activity level is a stark contrast to the three fawns of the house, but I like that. We are not at a loss for active pugs. She fits in well.
There are so many things to share about Sol’s time with us already. I will do my best to get some of them on the blog in the next couple of days. Keep an eye on the Flickr badge at the top of right sidebar for some pics and I will do my best to update the Doing Now section with some tidbits. I don’t want to make the posts too long and get anyone in at trouble at work
Monday, January 5, 2009
As you might have guessed from last week’s post, our itch to foster is being scratched. We never really made a decision to foster per se, however, our foster found us.
On the first Saturday after Christmas, I just returned home from a trip to Baltimore and was taking the pugs out for a short walk before we went to grab some dinner. While the pugs were smelling around on the corner, a car approached and the person inside asked if we wanted another pug - referencing the one on her lap. Confused as to why they were offering up their pug, we approached the car and found out that they had found the pug wandering the street a few days before and were unsure what to do with it. I asked if they were able to keep the pug for at least one more night and they assured me that they could. Knowing that, we immediately swapped numbers so that when I returned home I could call them and give them the contact information for Central Florida Pug Rescue who I knew would be able to help. However, after many attempts to contact them, I never spoke to those people again.
Cut to Monday morning.
I was plugging away in my office when the doorbell rang. When I approach the door, I was taken aback by a man in what looks very much like a police officer’s uniform. I quieted the pugs and then went out to speak with him. He asked if I was short a pug. I gave him a pug titled head look and said, “No, why?” He explained, that he just received a call about a pug wandering in our neighborhood and first wanted to check and make sure all ours were accounted for. This had me ever so confused as I wondered how the animal control officer even knew that I had pugs. It turned out that he lives in a neighborhood right behind us and frequently sees us walking our pugs. And after asking a few people in our subdivision he was easily able to track us down.
I let him know that all my pugs were present and accounted for and were all barking at him at the door. He explained that there was a black pug wandering about and that he was on his way to pick it up. My heart sank. Was this the same pug that I saw on Saturday? I told him the story of what happened on Saturday night and how we were trying to get the pug into rescue. He was very pleased with this and asked to take our rescue surrender form up with him so that he could get the person that was temporarily holding the dog to sign the pug over into CFPR’s care. (Through the conversation it was determined that this was not even the same person that we spoke to on Saturday. Apparently, the people that spoke to us on Saturday just released the pug back to the streets!)
The animal control officer went to retrieve the pugs and in about 5 minutes returned with an elderly, black, female pug that was clearly the pug we saw on Saturday evening. We put a leash and collar on her and scurried her off to the vet to get a quick checkup to ensure that bringing her into the house would not put Benjamin, Henry, Luna or Cupid at risk.
Here is what we found out at the vet:
- She is approximately 8 - 10 years old.
- She has an immature cataract in her left eye and a small growth on her left eyelid. In her right eye she has poor vision due to another condition.
- She has been spayed and currently weighs in at 18 pounds.
- She has no microchip.
- She is missing at least 6 teeth.
- She has pretty bad arthritis in her hips and it appears she has it in other joints as well.
- Here toenails were exceptionally long and curled under making it difficult for her to walk.
- But, she had nothing to prevent her from mingling with our crew so we promptly brought her home.
There are plenty of details to come about her first couple of days in the OBP household. With the adventure of the first week under our belt, we have taken a sigh of relief to have made it this far. We did not expect our foster to come to us, we expected to go retrieve her. Sometimes, I guess that is just how things work out. At least it saved me from having to make a decision about fostering.
PS - Holy Moly, we realize we didn’t eve tell you her name! Choosing a name was a day’s adventure in itself! I guess there really is a lot more to come.
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