The only thing that Henry might like more than walking in the rain, is being towel dried after a rainy walk. In his younger years, toweling Henry off would always spark a play session. After we dried him off, he would get fired up and run circles around the house and try to run off with the towel. Now, getting dried off is sorta like a mini massage for him. He groans and grunts and loves every minute of it.
The other day, it rained during our morning walk and we both got wet. When we got back to the car, I attempted to partially get Henry dry before we went home. Henry was sitting on my lap and as I started to dry him off, he flipped onto his back and just melted. He was like a wet noodle. Try as I might, he was not sitting back up, he was quite content to be toweled off while he relaxed.
Every once in a while, we will take Henry to the pet store instead of a park for his nightly walk. Usually we will do this when the weather is bad or if we need to pick something up at the pet store. With Henry's active nose, we find that he gets in about the same amount of steps, if not more, just wandering the aisles of the store as he would in the park.
Henry's routine is to zig zag down the aisles smelling everything on the bottom shelf. Some aisles get more attention than others, but he pretty much hits every aisle. As he is "shopping" he sometimes knocks things off the shelf, so whoever is holding the leash is also his personal cleanup crew.
And while Henry was busy sniffing away on his most recent outing, he caught the eye of a kitten that was available for adoption. This kitten intently followed Henry and wanted to get and play with him so badly! Since the kitten was in one of the upper cages, Henry, of course, did not even notice the kitten.
It was a rare event, which was not even supposed to happen according to the clause in the lease that reads "no dogs allowed in the building" but Henry, the rule breaker said, "hey, you only live once" and away he went into Peep #2's workplace! Peep #2 actually got permission from the BIG boss to allow Henry into the building after hours when Peep #2 had to work on a special project. So, Henry was permitted a quick jaunt into the building. He grabbed some water and air conditioning. He scoped out some of the building and of course gave a lot of the space the sniff test. Fortunately, he played it cool and didn't have any accidents (or any "on purposes" marking something he found fishy). There was not a lot to do or see, but he did well marching the hall ways. And now Peep #2 gets to have a good memory of the boy a work! #WorkingDog #HenryWorksHardForTheMoney
Welcome back to Ask OBP. I needed to revisit the ask from last week. I realized after the fact that the part about peep #1 also having pets as children somehow got edited out. Peep #1 had pets growing up. A cat who lived 25 years and was the show & tell subject of peep #1's kindergarten class and a Yorkie came to the family during the 4th grade year. The cat, of course was the boss and the dog was a diva. Again, sorry, that somehow got missed in last week's blog.
Jude, presented another question. It is a real brain teaser! Which pug has a personality most like the OBP peeps. Since the boys were given family names, our quick answer would be that Benjamin would most be like peep #1 and Henry would be most like peep #2. And while it may be true that the boys were named appropriately in the fact that they hold family traits, on an individual level, there are traits that could be shown to be opposite of that. For example, Henry is more of thinker and subdued. While that is not really a trait of either family tree, per se, this trait is more a trait of Peep #1. Benjamin was a quick acting, get it done now kind of guy and that is more like peep #2. But Benny was also a super lover and that romantic mindset belongs more to Peep #1. Henry, the logic minded guy is like peep #2. Neither OBPer is like either of the girls. Neither peep is a diva or so extra demanding so that would rule out either both Sol or Luna being like a specific peep. BUT both peeps can have bursts of impatience which is very like Luna!
So, I think the real answer, Jude, is that each of the pugs and their peeps share some common traits. And just like with children who are a blend of both their parents, the pugs have taken characteristics of each of their peeps (and some familial traits that their peeps may not even realize they, too, possess). We cannot say Benny is like 1 or Henry is just like 2. But what we can say is that when we are altogether that it is clear that we are family and cut from the same cloth. When we add extended family to that, it becomes more clear that they pugs could not be more our children had we bore them ourselves. LOL!!!
While there is no real story behind this photo, I just thought it was a nice one. On his nightly rides, Henry obviously likes to keep his head out the car window. With the time change, the sun sets earlier. This means he goes into sundowning a little earlier, too. But now that we keep a lot of lights on he is doing better with that. Maybe sometime soon on one of our rides, Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" will play for him in the background. Henry's always loved the sun and even with no vision he still knows if it sunny are dark out.
When we go to the dog beach, we typically go to the Ponce Inlet dog beach. There is another dog beach, however, in New Smyrna Beach. Both beaches actually flank the same body of water and while you can see each beach from the opposite side, it is not like you can swim there. The drive to New Smyrna is a lot longer. So our quick beach trips are normally to Ponce Inlet.
Since a recent storm washed away a lot of the access to the Ponce Inlet beach, we opted to go to the New Smyrna dog beach. Sadly, when we got there, we realized it was much too hot for a pug beach day.
At our house it was warm, but did not seem to hot for Henry. By the time we got to the beach, though, the sun was really beating down. It is a longish walk to the beach from the car, too and with each step it just kept getting hotter and hotter. We considered that maybe once we actually got to the shoreline, though, perhaps there would be a breeze and the water would cool Henry and take the edge off the now blazing heat.
But when we got to the beach, there was absolutely no breeze, the sand was still warm and the ocean was still as warm as bathwater. Poor Henry was a panting mess. And somehow, on one of the few steps Henry even took walking to the beach, he stepped on sand briers. 3 of them! And two of them were really big and super sharp. Immediately Henry started limping and and tried to walk on 3 paws simply because he could not walk on 2! He had two briers lodged in one foot and a third stuck in another.
All around the trip to the beach was simply a fail. There were 2 good points, though. Henry enjoyed his car ride and we didn't get stuck waiting for the drawbridge either way.
With the onset of cooler weather, upped meds and just general pug appetite, Henry cannot lay off the desire to eat and follow smells.
When he could see, Henry never considered that his food bowl came from the fridge. But now that he is driven by his nose and not his eyes, he realizes that his food is stored there. And even if is not time to eat, if he is nearby when the fridge door opens, he needs to poke his little nose in there. Following his nose, however, is the whole rest of his body. This makes it tough to close the fridge door when he has inserted himself in there once the door is open. He reminds me of a teenager coming home from school with the munchies trying to decide what he is going to snack on.
