Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Monday we saw Henry chillin' in the stroller. Today we see him chillin' in the car. Henry usually lays on the leg closest to the window while we drive. He likes this so that he can catch the smells and feel the wind. On this day, though, coming home from the vet, Henry just wanted to sleep like a baby. He just flopped on his back and went to sleep. The only thing that would have been funnier would be if we could have had him sucking on a pacifier! Oh Henry! Even in your dementia you still have a fabulous sense of humor!
#henrystrong #henryisagoodboy #hankybaby
Monday, February 1, 2016
Welcome back to Ask OBP. Today's question comes from Christie. She wants to know if any of our pugs tried to climb into the dishwasher on a mission of getting some bonus goodies. Well, Christie, although we have seen many a dog in a dishwasher doing just this, our pugs have not followed suit. There is a simple explanation for that, however. The reason is that they had already licked the plates and bowls clean prior to being loaded into the dishwasher. So, by the time they make it to the dishwasher there is really no crumb path for them to follow. We of course, would make it easy for them to lick the dregs from the plates so that they would not have to fetch and last licks from the dishwasher. The question is not why wouldn't our pugs climb in the dishwasher, the question would be why WOULD they need to?! Hahahaha!!!! With all of that said, I am sure if we left any drizzles on the dirty dishes, though, Benny would have made his way to both the top and bottom racks. He was a good cleaner upper that way! Even now, it is amazing how our home is so much dirtier without him around to lick up any crumbs from the floors. Pugs are like vacuums for sure! Good question, Christie! It sounds like your pugs may have been busted in the dishwasher a time or two. Is that so? Anyone else have dishwasher bandits?
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Since Henry has been under the weather, he's not been up to walking much. So, we've been taking him out in the stroller. He doesn't really like the stroller either, though. This has worked in our favor. We load him in the stroller and walk a few short blocks and then he demands to get out. Then he walks home in a huff as though he was never even in said stroller. We call this his walk of indignation. We stroll him until he becomes indignant, let him out then he struts home.
This pattern had been working pretty well. That is, until the weather got pretty chilly here in Florida. Once the temps fell to the 40's and 50's he didn't want to walk that much. That was a bit concerning, too, since Henry has always been a cool weather walker. We kind of thought the cold would improve his walking desire and ability. Nonetheless, the more walks like this we took the more we realized that the stroller usage might have started to back fire on us. Henry started to really embrace the stroller. You can see in this photo he is one passed out pug! On the day that the photo was taken, his passed out status did not last all that long, though. That day we walked the 2 mile neighborhood loop and he ended up walking about a half mile total. That is max walking distance these days. Typically he gets in about 4-6 houses and back. So, the stroller has been helpful in inspiring him walk and working against us in the fact that now he is taking advantage! But of course that is ok. We don't mind. Henry is a good boy deserving of any happy times he can get.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
After a few days of virtually being house bound by Henry's eye drop schedule, we were all getting a bit of cabin fever and a little punchy. Henry hung out with us on the sofa. The center cushion is unarguably Cupid's seat. If you are in that seat and she comes sauntering over, well, you just better either scoot over, move to a clamshell chair, the floor or MAYBE, if you put one of her favorite blankets on your lap, she MIGHT sit on your lap. Well, imagine her dismay when she discovered that a passed out Henry had commandeered her spot!
At first she was hot under the collar and gave the stink eye to all in the vicinity. Next, she bit the dust and begrudgingly took the sliver of the center cushion that was still to be had. Ultimately she relaxed some and somehow managed to keep her dignity in tact even while keeping company with a dog! By the end, there were 2 critters on the couch sharing the center square. I am not exactly sure if we can say they are finally friends but at least there was no hissing, no bapping, no barking and all was right with the world for an hour (until it was eye drop time again).
#WasFunWhileItLasted #BingGoesTheTimer #AnHourIsNotLongDependingOnWhatYouAreDoing
Complete sidenote: Today is Luna's Gotcha Day. We reported it was 1/26 but it is 1/29. Simple dyslexic maneuver on our part. Our apologies.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Shortly after we started noticing that Henry was having a rough setback with his poops and then his brain, we realized was that a new issue was cropping up - we were noticing some weirdness with his eye! The first thing we noticed was a weird spot on his eye (Wednesday the 13th). By midday Thursday his eye was producing a lot of mucus and he was squinting terribly. Late Thursday we call the eye vet and made an appointment for the earliest available time. Luckily that happened to be Friday at 8:45am. This was not good at all for traffic, but we were relieved to be able to get Henry in to see the eye vet before the weekend.
Henry's eye exam revealed that he had an ulcer. (Side note, we have confirmed this was not from an injury/trauma. i.e. not from riding with his head out the car window. Whoosh!) In a normal case, surgery would have been the recommended option, but we know that Henry is far from normal. Henry is not a good candidate for surgery so we were left with treatment plan b - hourly eye drops. We have experienced pretty hectic eye drop schedules with Luna, so at first we were't too worried about hourly eye drops. And then we thought about it for a second, and asked the vet, "Do we have to do these through the night, too?"
Knowing that that was a daunting task, the eye vet said if we were to get 2-3 sets of drops through the night that that would be OK.
As soon as we got home we started his eye drops. Each hour we gave him 3 different drops. We had to wait at least 3-5 minutes between drops. And the kicker to all this is one of the drops was refrigerated.
Do you know how quickly an hour can go? It seems like every time we turned around we were giving Henry and eye drop. Henry was a real trooper about and didn't seem to mind at all.
At night time, we decided that we would go all in and stick to the hourly drop schedule. After all, the eye drops were the only hope and we really wanted a good report when we went for our follow-up appointment on Monday. Every hour on the hour the alarm would go off and we would give Henry his first drop. One of the hardest parts was having to wait 3-5 minutes between drops. When are you are half asleep, 3-5 minutes is just enough time to fall back asleep. And since one of the drops was refrigerated, that meant that one of us had to leave the nice warm bed to go get the drops.
We tried to break this into shifts, so that we weren't completely sleep deprived, but that was a tough task. To make sure we actually landed the drop in Henry's eye we had to turn at least a night light on. And going to the fridge made noise too. The icing on the cake was that about every 2-3 hours, giving Henry the drops would cause him to stir. And he would need to go out to potty, and then of course he would want a treat! This was a bad habit that we certainly didn't want to start!
So for the weekend, we got no more than about 50 minutes of uninterrupted sleep. By Monday morning, when we went back to the eye vet, we were quite groggy, but we were very anxious to hear if there was any healing at all. After taking a look at Henry's eye, the eye vet said there was in fact healing. In my sleep deprived state, I blurted out, "Like 50% or more!" Unfortunately not. But, Henry's eye had healed by about 10-15%. This was enough to change his eye drops schedule from every hour to every 2 hours.
Dropping down to every 2 hours was so much easier! We kept this schedule day and night until Thursday when Henry had his next follow-up appointment. On Thursday, the eye vet noted even more healing. While Henry is still not out of the woods, the infection in his eye was cleared, so that was a huge step. We were now able to step his eye drops down to 4-5 times per day! Compared to hourly eye drops that schedule is a piece of cake!
Henry will go back to the eye vet next Thursday. Hopefully, his eye will continue to improve. In the meantime, Henry is keeping his eye open and does not show any signs of discomfort, so that is fantastic!
#HenryStrong #HenryStrongAllDayLong
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Shortly after sharing the post about Henry's Teefers last week, Henry started chewing a chewy stick and snapped off one of his canine teeth almost at the gum line. Ugh. I say one of his canine's but the truth is that it is his last of his 2 canine teeth. He did the same thing on the other side about 5 years ago. We heard the tooth snap and it startled him, but fortunately it has not seemed to bother him (and neither has the other one, thank goodness!) There was a time when the vet was worried that the tooth would need to come out but fortunately that never came to fruition. So, we will keep an eye on his mouth, now, too. This kid has enough strikes against him, can he please catch a break?! He has been trying to swap chewing for pacing in the evening and now this may put the kibosh on that!
At first we could not even find where the tooth landed but after sifting through vacuum dust we found it. We were a little surprised how white it still was. And again, thankfully, he is still able to eat and seems to be having no real troubles with the broken canine. #HenryStrong #ThisTooShallPass
Monday, January 25, 2016
This week's ask question comes from Sue W who wants to know if our pugs ever got into a tiff. She indicated that her gang gets along well most of the time, but every once in a while they don't see eye to eye.
Good question, Sue. Our group, whether it be the 2 originals (B&H), the tribe of 3 (B, H &L) or the full brood of 4 (B, H, L & S) have only on rare occasion not gotten along well. The biggest incident was when Solsey bullied all the others for their knuckle bones. They each had their own knuckle bones, but Solsey grew a little obsessed by them and literally went over to each dog and stole their bone and brought it back to her space until she had 4 large bones of her own. We had only discovered what the problem was when we noticed that Sol was stock piling them and Benny was whimpering trying to get his back. Sol would NOT allow this. It wasn't until the peeps stepped in and reminded otherwise sweet Solsey that there was a one bone per customer rule in the OBP home. It was likely she had never experienced such bone joy so we let her be excited but did need to control her exuberance.
There were a few other times when the boys were not ready to make a bone trade off and the not ready pug would give a little warning growl to back away. And then there would be times when Luna would be "mad" at Henry for not engaging in play and fuss at him in order to get his attention. But overall, the 2, 3, 4,3, 2 of them have really been good buddies for their whole lifetime of togetherness.
Great question, Sue! We are pleased to hear that it sounds like the same is true in your home. And isn't that the case with pugs? They are pretty much everyone's best friend.
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