WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE RECYCLED

Hi everybody. This is Dutch. I know this is Puglet's blog but he said it'd be OK if I borrowed it for a day.

I really liked reading all of your stories. I know Puglet told you a little bit of mine, but he doesn't know my whole story. My human said maybe I should share more of it in case anyone's wondering what it's like to be recycled....

I used to live with a lady and a bunch of other Dalmatians. The Lady imported me from my homeland (The Netherlands) when I was a puppy. She wanted a show dog and she wanted a winner. My parents were winners, so The Lady thought I would be a winner too.

I never wanted to be a show dog, but I didn't have any choice. Luckily there's a height limit for my breed, and by the time I was a year old, I was half an inch too tall for the show ring. Dalmatians in The Netherlands are bigger than American Dalmatians. I guess The Lady didn't know this.

That extra half inch made me an official loser. The Lady lost interest in me and I spent the next few years in the kennel. She let me make babies a few times and that was fun, but that was about it.

Until one day, a visitor came to see me. It was very exciting because I didn't get many visitors. I tried to be on my best behavior for the visitor, but it was hard to contain my happiness. The Lady yelled at me to be good, but the visitor didn't yell. She just tried to hold me still so she could pet me.

I didn't know who the visitor was, but I loved her instantly.

After a few hours, the visitor put me in a crate with a blue fuzzy blanket. I had no idea she was my new human (I found out later that Dalmatian Rescue helped her find me) and didn't know what was happening or where we were going. It was very scary. We rode in the car for a very long time.

We got to San Francisco in the middle of the night. It was nothing like the kennel and I was so overwhelmed I couldn't pee. When we got to our house, there were more stairs than I'd ever seen in my whole entire life. This is a little embarrassing, but I was 3 years old and didn't know how to walk up a flight of stairs. It took a long time, but eventually I made it to my new home on the second floor.

My first day in my new home.

Stairs were the first of many many MANY things I knew nothing about and found completely terrifying. Like mailboxes. And traffic cones. And garbage cans. And those things newspapers live in. And bikes. And buses. And skateboards. And people - lots and lots of people. People who wanted to pet me. People who looked me right in the eyes. People in hats and glasses. People with scary shopping carts full of cans. Way too many people. And dogs. I was never allowed to play with other dogs so I didn't know how. The vet said I was too skinny to have my boy parts removed and other dogs didn't seem to like them very much.

My human could tell I was overwhelmed by all the new stuff so we spent our fist day together hiking with the cows. It was my first time off-leash and I ran around like crazy. I didn't get much exercise in the kennel and my legs didn't enjoy running as much as I did. By the time we got home, my back legs wouldn't bend.

New yoga pose: Rigid Dog?

I didn't want to be any trouble on my very first day, so I tried to sleep without bending. At first my human thought my yoga pose was kinda funny, but we ended up at the emergency vet. They had to give me a shot to make my legs bend again.

I want to say everything got easier after that, but it took me a little while to understand the real world. My human said I was like a puppy in a dog body. So we took it slow. And I grew up. And the world got less scary every day.

Today, the world isn't scary at all (except for cameras). And if you met me on the street, you'd never guess I used to be afraid of mailboxes.

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FLATTIE NEWS!

Today the flat me heads back to the Sunshine State on a very important mission (on top of his usual mission). He enjoys the sunniness, spends time with Central Florida Pug Rescue, meets two little puggies and learns that gators need love too!

You can read about it here on flatpuglet.com.