The boys love a Kong with a dab of peanut butter inside. They will spend hours getting the peanut butter out and Henry will continue to lick and chew the Kong long after the peanut butter is gone. Luna, on the other hand, doesn’t really get the Kong. She will run off with her Kong, lick it a few times and then come running back to me all frustrated, with a look that says, “Why did you hide my peanut butter? I have a bowl you know! You could have just put the peanut butter in my bowl!”
I spent most of the weekend working on the calendar, so the pugs had lots of chewing time this weekend. They had nice new knucklebones to keep them busy while I worked, but their chewing reminded me of something I wanted to blog about awhile back.
Henry has a thing with compressed rawhide bones. Instead of just chewing them, he likes to peel the rawhide off in layers. Unfortunately, he is quite good at it too! As he peels away the layers, I take them away because they are what we call “choking hazards”.
Benjamin hates it when Henry unravels a rawhide bone. Benjamin’s preferred plan of attack is to get the bone so slobbery on an end that it pretty much turns to mush.
Depending on the size of the rawhide strip that Henry pulls off, we sometimes let Luna chew on it. Luna has such a tiny mouth that she couldn’t even come close to getting the larger pieces into her mouth. She will happily chew for hours on a piece of rawhide that we had to take away from Henry.
On a completely different note, how is everyone that was in Ike’s path doing? I hope everyone is OK.
Whenever I get the pugs a bone or something to chew I always buy three of whatever it is. That way each pug has their own bone. I could probably get away with only getting one though. When I first give each of the pugs their bone, they all run off to chew. After a few minutes of chewing, the amount of time varies depending on the type of bone I give them, Benjamin, Henry & Luna all become interested in one bone and take turns chewing the same bone. One of them will chew for a bit, then go to get a drink of water and then one of the other pugs will take their turn. This process repeats usually until it is time for bed. Benjamin & Henry have been doing this since they were pups. Now it takes a bit longer to get their turn since little Luna came along. But it can’t bother them too much because I always maintain a one bone per pug ratio. They just choose not to chew it. Silly pugs!
Whenever I am in the kitchen, the pugs keep a very close eye on me. After all, the kitchen is where we like to keep that chilly thing with doors that seems to have a never ending supply of turkey.
It just so happened that on this night the pugs aligned and they watched over my every move in formation. What is amusing, though, is they are in reverse order. Usually, Henry is the one playing it cool laying on the pillow and Benny is leading the charge up front.
By now I think everyone knows that Benjamin has a thing for pumpkin bread. So when it isn’t Fall, Benjamin is sad because there is no pumpkin bread. Well, fear not! I think we have found a possible replacement to get him through Spring and Summer - blueberry bread. Blueberry bread is the latest bread choice at Bob Evans and we have been bringing some home to the pugs. They most definitely like it. They don’t love it as much as pumpkin bread, but it is definitely a good second choice.
On a side note, when I take photos where I put the bread on the glass table and have the pugs wait until I snap the photo, Luna always cracks me up. She always sticks her head underneath the glass and tries to smell and lick the bread. Guess she is learning about a little thing called the “glass ceiling.”
On Sunday, we gave the pugs their first ever knucklebones. In the past I have shied away from knucklebones in favor of rib bones because the rib bones seem like they are a better size for the pugs and have a lot less gunk on them. But on Sunday, they were out of rib bones so I settled for the knucklebones. Plus, secretly, I had always wanted to see what Benjamin, Henry & Luna’s reaction would be to the size of these massive treats.
Needless to say they were more than pleased with the knucklebones. In fact, they were wondering why I had been buying them those tiny little rib bones when they had knucklebones all along.
The funniest part of watching them eat the bones was listening to the noises they made. They snorted, grunted, sighed and made all kinds of sounds trying to clean off the bones. I got a little bit of Henry on video going to town on his knucklebone. Turn the sound up and you’ll hear all the noise he was making. Notice how even the cat was interested in getting a smell.
I only let the pugs chew the bones for about an hour every few days. Henry actually gets a little less time because he is a much more effective chewer. I don’t want them to overdo it. There is a lot of gunk on those bones and much to their chagrin I think they should pace themselves.
It is usually Luna that ends up wearing most of her dinner, but the other night Henry saved a little yogurt for desert. Unlike Luna, who is completely oblivious to the fact that she ends up wearing most of her dinner, Henry was aware that the yogurt was on his nose and he kept trying to lick it off. The only problem was that his tongue wasn’t quite long enough. I wiped it off for him, but not before I had a few minutes of fun with him.
