SPOOOOOKY

Thanks to my human's brochialsaurus or snuffalufagus or whatever it is that's making her sick, today's Daily Puglet turned into the Nightly Puglet instead. This has *never* before happened in the history of Puglet and if I didn't love my human so much, I'd be really mad at her for letting germs come between me and the internet.

Sigh.

Just one more reason to reeeeeeeally hate not having my own thumbs.

I don't have a picture for today, but I do have a pre-Halloween video. Because when my human *finally* took us to the park, the sun was going down and all these supercreepy noises were happening. Wild noises. Spoooooooky noises.

I couldn't tell what the noises were or who they were coming from, but they seemed to follow us all through the canyon. My human said it was all very Blair Witch. Whatever that means. Dutch was afraid we were going to get eaten alive by a werewolf, so I did my best to scare the spooky noise-maker away by barking at it. We didn't get eaten, so I guess my plan worked.

Speaking of spooky, I'm not sure what's happening for Halloween at my house. Dutch said he saw my costume and it's extrasuper humiliating, but I don't know what it is yet. I haven't had to go out in public wearing it, and no embarrassing pictures have been taken. Yet. Paws crossed neither of these things happens, BUT for everyone who isn't so lucky...

Show off your dressed-up self in the 2010 Howl-o-ween photo gallery. Let everyone see your Halloween fierceness!

Email your photo to: pug@dphoto.com
(the name of your file will show up as your name in the gallery, so if you want everyone to know who you are, make sure the name of your picture is "YOUR-NAME-HERE.jpg")

Visit the gallery at: http://pug.dphoto.com/

Uuuuuuhm. I just remembered we never picked a random winner from the last gallery (doh!) so we'll do that next week :) Winner will still get a fabulous Henrietta... or a luscious crackball!

BRONCORHINOCEROS

Well, my human found out why none of the ancient secrets have made her feel better. The vet told her all the pug noises she's been making are from something called broncorhinoceros? Bronconewmoanya? Something like that.

I guess you need drugs to make whatever it is she has go away. And now she has drugs. Super happy she's going to get better - maybe we'll see the light of day soon!

The only good thing about my human being sick is she hasn't dressed us up in anything for Halloween. I heard her say something about a costume, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm hoping she'll let me go as a Yeti. Y'know, that big hairy big-foot guy?

That's what I'm being in today's picture, but I think the Yeti is more of a video thing though. In a picture it just looks like I'm showing off my boy parts or something. Kinda embarrassing.

Last year I was a lobster for Halloween. Dutch always wears the same red glittery devil ears. What's everyone here being for Halloween???

LONG DAYS

It's been a few days since we've gone on any adventures. A few very long days. It's because my human still sounds like she's turning into a pug. We've been snuggling a lot more than usual, but I'm kinda getting tired of snuggling and I think my human is too.

My friend Lily's human gave her some ancient Vietnamese secret recipe that was supposed to fix the sickness. Orange juice and ginger and that sticky stuff bees make. It smelled NASTY. My human made new noises when she tried to drink it, but they weren't exactly healthy sounding noises.

She has a vet appointment tomorrow, but tomorrow is a long way away - does anyone here have any ancient or secret things that might fix her now so we can go out and play??

Oh, PS: Sophie's sister Pixie is on the stupid Frolic thing today. My human fell in love with Pixie like I fell in love with Sophie. Minus the pukey feeling. I guess Pixie is kinda awesome:

http://frolicphoto.com/dailyfrolic/2010/10/pixie-2/

PUG LOVE

So, if you've known me for awhile you know I've been single for pretty much ever. I kinda fell in love once, but it didn't really work out. She lived in Oregon, I live in California. The only thing keeping us together was the internet and that wasn't enough when we hadn't even sniffed butts.

Anyway. Last week when I was out supermodeling for Daisy, a really nice lady saw me posing in front of her house and invited us into her backyard to meet her two pugs, Sophie and Pixie. I like people. I like pugs. Cool, right?

Sophie

It was more than cool. Way more. Because as soon as I saw Sophie, I felt all weird inside. Kinda like I was about to puke, but in a good way (my human called it chemistry? No idea). Sophie is older than me, so I'm guessing she knows more about love than I do. She wasn't shy at all - skipped the butt sniff and went right in for a kiss.

Yeah. My first real kiss. It made me feel all jello-y. Of course my human took a picture (totally embarrassing) and then laughed at me because you're supposed to close your eyes when someone kisses you? Makes no sense, but I'm glad I kept my eyes open. Sophie is even cuter up close. AND she lives in my state.

Woo hoo!

Have you ever had the jello-y feeling about another dog? I don't feel it anymore and kinda want to know if it's going to come back.

NEW HUMAN!

I have a new human in my life. Her name is Daisy, she's 13 years old, and every Wednesday for the next 2 months, we're going to hand out. I'm superexcited about her.

If you don't know how much I love people, let me tell you: I love people. I've heard my people say there's not enough love in the world for The Pug and I guess she's right; if you have love to give, I'll take it. That's one reason I'm excited about Daisy.

Another reason I'm excited about Daisy is she loves me AND takes my picture (this means she also feeds me). She wants to be a pet photographer when she grows up, and my human is doing some thing called mentoring so Daisy can learn what it's like to photograph me. Or something like that.

All I know is that Daisy is supercool. She likes dogs and she likes taking pictures. We'll be going on adventures every Wednesday, so I'll have new cool stuff to talk about. Like the new pug girlfriend I met last week and her very cool sister... but I'll tell you all about them tomorrow.

FFF: poodle vs poodle

My human's head isn't completely done exploding (I guess it's full of something called snot?) and she's making all these funny noises that make her sound like a pug.

I remembered she took pictures of me and Dutch playing the day Nikon came back, and I thought they'd be cute. I thought they would make her laugh. I don't really remember going poodle on Dutch for no good reason, but I guess I did.


Uhm. Well. I guess they're kinda funny in a way. Except for the one where Dutch is eating my face - and that is the *only* one that made my human laugh. Or snort. Or whatever sound she made before she started coughing.

Humiliating.

Oh oh oooh! One good thing about my human being sick is she didn't go out and take any pictures yesterday. And that means you-know-who gets to be on today's stupid Daily Frolic!

http://frolicphoto.com/dailyfrolic/2010/10/puglet/

BODY DOUBLES

My human is kinda sick today so I had to come up with my own picture for today's post. It took awhile to figure out what to do, since I can't take a picture of myself and I couldn't get Dutch to go anywhere near a camera.

I really hate not having thumbs.

Luckily my human's mom just sent us a picture of my pug cousin Sophie and my second cousin (?) Data the dalmatian. Sophie lives in New Jersey, so I've never met her, and Data lives in Michigan with my human's-mom's-brother's-son (I think).

Hopefully they look enough like me and Dutch to fill in until my human's head is done exploding. Even though I would never wear a pink harness like the one Sophie has on.

HAPPINESS IS...

A Nikon. And cookies. And the beach. And a mini tennis ball that squeaks (until you eat the squeaker or lose it in the sand). I guess happiness is a bunch of other things too, but those are the first ones that came to mind.

My human says happiness is a blue sky filled with little puffy clouds (even if you have to take a picture of it with your phone). Today the sky is white and foggy. I hope happiness is fog too.

Dutch says happiness is a squirrel to chase, but not Nikon coming home from the camera spa. I've never, ever seen one of these "squirrels" Dutch likes to chase, but I guess if he thinks it makes him happy...

Now that things around here are back to normal, I have a whole bunch of stuff to tell you about. Dear Puglet. The Yeti! And one or two surprises my human said exist but hasn't told me any details about. You'll know when I know, I promise.

While we're waiting... what is happiness to you?

HAPPINESS

Yesterday morning we went to the beach and when we came home there was a yellow thing stuck to our door. This has happened before so I knew exactly what it meant: the UPS man tried to give us a box. And I could tell by the noises my human was making that the UPS man had a box she reeeeally wanted to get.

Something like.... Nikon?

My paws were crossed, but I didn't want to mention anything about cameras because my human was a little bit mad at me for accidentally peeing on some dude's video camera at the beach. So I just stood there with the yellow sticky in my mouth and tried to look pathetic.

Oh - and the peeing thing? Totally not my fault, by the way. The guy left it sitting on top of a little tiny plastic bucket thing - right in the middle of the beach. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't want to pee on that?

Anyway.

I know from experience that UPS's yellow sticky thing can be good or bad news. Good news if my human remembers to call UPS and ask them to hold our box at the depot place so she can pick it up, bad news if she forgets to call and we have to wait until the next day for the UPS man to try again (realllly bad news if we miss him again the second time).

Lucky for us all, my human didn't forget to call. We went to the UPS place last night and picked up a box from, where else, El Segundo! Home of the dreaded camera spa. Woo hoo! Nikon came home with some new parts and I can't wait to test them out.


By the time you read this, I'll be supermodeling my butt off.

PS: My human says everyhuman should go look at her stupid Daily Frolic thing today. Something about a puppy? So-cute-it-hurts? It's not a pug and it's not me, so don't feel like you have to or anything:

http://frolicphoto.com/dailyfrolic/2010/10/harvey/

THE END IS NEAR?

Something happened yesterday that really freaked my human out: it rained.

The end is near, she said. Whatever that means.

Ok, I'm not a huge rain fan. But I like new things and it hasn't rained in soooo long, it just kinda seemed like a new thing. Not really something to get all freaked out about, right? Except I guess summer never really came to San Francisco this year, and the rain usually doesn't happen this early.

My human says once the rain starts, it sometimes keeps going. Like, for months. Like, until the next summer. I'm not sure that's 100% true, but we definitely didn't get much of a summer this year. And it did feel kinda weird to have rain already. Not sure that means the world is coming to an end though.

Kinda curious what other weather is happening out there and if it includes any of the wet stuff. What is the sky doing where you live??

FFF: BOO!

So, the quality of today's FFF is a little lame because *somebody* sent Nikon off to the "spa". It's also kinda embarrassing, but since it made my human laugh, I'm going to let you laugh at me too.

Y'see, I found this box in the recycling bin. It smelled waaaaaaay different than any other box I've ever smelled in my whole entire life. And by that, I mean it smelled good. Really good. So I stuck my head inside to get a better sniff, and maybe even a taste of whatever it was that smelled so yummy.

Because my human usually eats tasteless, smell-less cereal made of twigs and bark, I'd never had a reason to stick my head into a cereal box before. Otherwise, I probably would have learned my lesson as a puppy and saved myself some humiliation. But no. She waited until now and yeah, I got my head stuck in the stupid box.

What made it even worse was brother Dutch heard all the thrashing and thought there was a raccoon or something in the kitchen. His barking woke up my human, who was kind enough to take a picture of my cereal box moment for all to see.

Then she took the box off my head.

FLAMING TAR BARRELS?

Ok, I promise the is the last time I will talk about Cayucos since none of you got to go with us. But one last fun thing about the weekend there was listening to our humans tell each other stories (especially when it made water come out someone's nose).

It's hard to believe my human had a life before I came along, but she did. And like it or not, yours did too. Oh yeah. And if you don't believe me, just ask them.

Anyway. I learned is our humans have a lot more in common than just pugs. Spencer's mom was a tomboy growing up and used to get bullied at school for being quiet and pretty - ditto for my human. Bellatrix's mom went to Catholic school and had to wear a goofy outfit every single day; when my human went to school in some foreign country, they made her wear a goofy tie. Bellatrix's dad wasn't there, but I guess he and my human have the same taste in kid's breakfast cereal, cars and both watch some stupid TV show called Man, Woman, Wild.

Pretty random, huh?

Listening to the humans talk, I learned all sorts of krazy-with-a-k things they did before they had us pugs to play with. Like, one time my human went to this place in England where people run through the streets carrying flaming things. She said it's like the running of the bulls, but with people. And fire. Talk about krazy!



What did YOUR human do for fun before you came along??

THE BAD BITS

The only non-fun part of the whole entire Cayucos weekend came on the last day...

So, we went out to breakfast at this really cool dog-friendly restaurant. There were lots of other dogs there and the waitress lady brought us cookies and a bowl of water.

Pretty cool, I thought.

Until the waitress lady brought plates and plates of food to our table - but not a single plate of food went on the floor. Yup. That's right. While the humans feasted, we sat under the table and starved to death.

The waitress lady brought SO much food to the table, our humans couldn't finish it all. And when I volunteered to help devour a stupid plate of toast, you totally know what happened. Uh huh. Got in trouble for begging. Begging for food no one else even wanted!

Cruel and unusual punishment.

And my punishment for begging? Totally humiliating. I was forced to Jimmy next to this statue of a pig (who was also Jimmying) in front of the whole entire restaurant. While my human took a picture. Yeah. Talk about super-embarrassing!

KRAZY WITH A K

Bellatrix & Spencer working it for Casio

Once we figured out Cayucos wasn't some black-hole spa of no return, the fun started. And it pretty much kept going the whole entire time. Unless we were napping. Oh, and except for one other part - but I'll get to that later.

Spencer & Bellatrix are kinda like me & Frank. Except me and Frank are both boys and Bellatrix is only half boy (seriously, she's a hermaphrodite). Anyway, they are best friends and totally know how to have a good time.

SPENCER!

Spencer showed Bella how to get yelled at for drinking the ocean, and Bella showed Spencer how to get yelled at for eating sand. I got yelled at for trying to roll on a dead seal, but I knew how to do that before we went to Cayucos. Dutch never does anything wrong so he didn't get yelled at for doing anything.

BELLATRIX!

My human was a little worried me & Dutch might feel left out, but S & B totally included us in everything. Bellatrix kicked my butt a little when I tried to hump her the way I hump Frank, but even that was kinda fun.

The amount of fun we had together was krazy. So krazy, you've got to spell it with a K. And the napping wasn't bad either.

Me & Bellatrix sleeping off the kraziness.

CAYUCOS!

So, after my human sent Nikon off to the "spa" she said she had a huge surprise for me & Dutch. And the name of the surprise was Cayucos.

Cayucos?

I'd never heard of a Cayuco and Dutch was kinda freaked out because he thought Cayucos sounded "spa-like" (he's still convinced spa = go away and don't come back). Google wasn't any help because I had no idea how to spell Cayucos and sometimes Google can't spell either.

When a huge black truck we've never seen before pulled up to our house that night, we (especially Dutch) were a little freaked out. Dutch tried to run out the dog door but it was locked because of the raccoons. I just tried to look my cutest (just in case). There was a knock at the door and my human grabbed a bunch of bags, said let's go.

We didn't go.

Then I heard a voice I recognized from the dog park. It was my friend Bellatrix's mom. She is suuuper nice and would never take us to a spa and not let us come home. I told Dutch the coast was clear and we all loaded into the big black truck. Bellatrix and Spencer were both inside it waiting for us. Four hours later, we were all in Cayucos...

Pug love in Cayucos.

Holy cowpies. Turns out Cayucos isn't some black hole spa - it's a little town by the beach where my bud Spencer B's family has a beach house. Like, right on the beach. And me, Dutch, Spencer and his girl Bellatrix spent 3 whole days in Cayucos celebrating Spencer's 2nd birthday.

We swam and ran and played and napped. It was crazy fun. I think our humans had crazy fun too because they laughed a whole lot. One time my human laughed so hard, water came out her nose. All the humans made pug sounds when that happened.

I'm still napping off all the Cayucos fun, so I'll fill you in on more crazy fun details tomorrow. For now, here's what Cayucos looks like when the sun goes down and you're sitting on Spencer's deck with your friends.

Sunset in Cayucos

SADNESS

Yesterday I heard my human on the phone talking to someone about Nikon. Since she wasn't talking about me, I didn't really pay much attention to what she was saying. I mean, she talks about stupid camera stuff a lot.

So, I didn't think anything of it until she started taking Nikon apart. First she took the strap thing off, then the lens and battery and memory. Then she starting hunting around for a box. And that's when I panicked.

ME: what are you doing to Nikon?
MY HUMAN: Nikon is going away for a little while.
ME: away? Away where? For how long?
MY HUMAN: to the camera spa, for about 2 weeks.

What the?? I've been reeeally good since the poodle incident. There have been many MANY times I've wanted to go poodle on someone, but I've controlled myself. I've stomped down my urges. I've been good. Well, at least since the last time my human threatened to get rid of Nikon.

But despite my extrasupergood behavior, my human stuck poor Nikon in a box and gave it to the UPS man. Dutch said "the camera spa" might be human code for going away and not ever coming back!

The address on the box Nikon got stuffed into is some place called El Segundo. It's here in California, but I've never heard of it. I'm a little worried I may not see Nikon again. Has anyone ever been to El Segundo? Is there really a camera spa there???

LATE NIGHT VISITOR

Last night at approximately 2:03 we had a little visitor in our kitchen. The Visitor woke me up, and I woke Dutch up and we both woke my human up. She wasn't exactly happy about this.

Me and Dutch could totally hear and smell The Visitor in the kitchen all the way from the bedroom. And it smelled scary. I wanted Dutch to go first, he wanted me to go first. So we both just stood on the bed and barked. Of course my human couldn't hear or smell anything, so she wasn't exactly happy about this either.

After about 5 minutes of our best barking and growling, my human finally stopped telling us to shut up, got out of bed and turned on a light in the hallway. And there was The Visitor, standing there in the kitchen doorway wearing a mask, just... staring at us.

I wasn't really afraid or anything, but I was kinda too afraid to move because we've never had a masked Visitor (or any strange visitor) in our kitchen at 2 in the morning. And The Visitor was bigger than me and smelled scary. Dutch hid behind my human and growled. My human kinda screeched a little and grabbed our collars. The Visitor stared at us for a few very long seconds, then ran out the dog door.

Of course I wanted to chase after The Visitor's masked, trespassing be-hind and totally go poodle, but my human said no way. I argued, but Dutch didn't. My human locked the dog door shut and mumbled something about raccoons in the hood and no going poodle and rabies. I'm not 100% sure what she meant, and she was kinda grumpy about being awake in the middle of the night so I didn't ask.

I guess maybe The Visitor was a raccoon?? Anyone here have raccoon experience?

DEAR PUGLET?

You know how I get a lot of emails asking me questions and stuff? Well, I've been thinking about making 'Ask Puglet' or 'Dear Puglet' a regular feature. Or a not-so-regular feature, depending on how many questions I get asked.

I really like getting emails, and my human has this cute little mailbox thing I can totally pose with, but Dutch says I'm not exactly qualified to give out advice. Even with Google backing me up, I guess there are some problems I don't know really know how to solve.

Example
A friend of mine (let's call her Vivian) has been getting kinda pooped on by someone she used to be friends with (let's call the pooper Poohead). I'm pretty sure it's because Poohead borrowed money from Vivian to pay for a trip to the vet and either doesn't want to pay it back or can't, so she decided to just stop being friends with Vivian instead.

She stopped responding to Vivian's emails and phone calls and even flaked on a one-on-one playdate without even calling to say she wasn't coming. On top of all that, she's also been saying some untrue, very un-friendly things to other people about Vivian.

How poopy is that?!?

Pret-ty poopy if you ask me. Vivian isn't worried or upset about the money part. I don't think she's upset about any of it - but I am! I totally want to Go Poodle on Poohead, because it's just wrong to treat someone so bad. Especially someone who helped you in a time of need. My gut says no one poops on MY friend and gets away with it. But my conscience (aka, my human) says some people can be poopy sometimes and there's nothing I can do to fix that.

Still. If I got a 'Dear Puglet' from Vivian about this particular situation, I'd probably tell her to Go Poodle on Poohead for being such a... poohead. Do you think this is good or bad advice? Does it make me seem more (or less) qualified to solve the problems of innocent friends and strangers?

CRACKBALL

I know a lot of pugs aren't really into fetching. But I also know a lot of pugs here aren't pugs. Or even dogs. But you don't really need to be a fetcher to like playing with the toy I'm about to tell you about. But you *do* need a human who likes to shop because these suckers are getting kinda hard to find.

So here it is, my new favorite toy/addiction: The Crackball.

Technically, it's called a Flexa Foam ball. And it's made by some company called Hartz. They used to only come in this crazy rainbow color, which is I think why they didn't sell very well and got discontinued. Dutch LOVED the rainbow balls (of course) and The Man bought a huge box of them for him when he heard they were going to stop making them. We still have a few left, but they are all Dutch-sized.

I never had a crackball of my own, and now they are kinda hard to find.

But Miley's mom, who's a better shopper than my human, was able to find some crackballs at a store called Nugget (!) and also on the internet. She got a mini non-rainbow one for me and it is the COOLEST thing ever. It totally drives Dutch nuts that I have my own crackball now, and that makes it even more fun :)

I know the christmas thing will be happening again, so if you're looking for a cool new toy - tell your human to start looking for crackballs. Like, now.

Here's a video of the BIG, Dutch sized crackball. As you can see, big crackballs and pugs don't mix. At least not in water. Click to biggify if you want to see me look stupid trying to fetch a ball in water.

185 lb PUG

Since Friday's Freeze Frame was all about my ridiculously cute baby self, I thought it'd be cool to go big today. Like big big. Like, ginormous big. 185lb big.

185 lb big (and Jimmying!)

My mega-self's name is Flash and I met him at the beach yesterday before heading over to Pug Sunday. And I guess he's really a mastiff and not a 185lb pug, but he looks like a pug to me (a huge, long nosed, straight tailed pug!). Google says that's because pugs kinda come from mastiffs, however that works.

Flash was superfun to play with, but it was even more fun to watch him play with Dutch. We kinda ganged up on him. Hee hee. Dutch tried to act all cool, but you could tell he was a lit-tle freaked out by the mega-me (I'm guessing a 185lb pug is probably Dutch's worst nightmare).

My human always tells people that pugs are only little on the outside. I never really understood what that meant until I heard her tell Flash's dad that inside, I'm the same size as Flash. And I think that means HUGE.

FFF: baby me

I'm the big little one.

I have no idea how my human forgot she had these pictures of me, but that's what I heard her tell Bellatrix's mom last night. Her exact words?

I must have looked at these before, but I really don't remember them.

Don't ask me how you can look at ridiculously cute baby pictures of your one and only pug... then completely FORGET you ever saw them. But I guess these things can happen to gimpy-brained people.

Ok, honestly - I don't really remember these pictures either. And I'm in them. My first human took the pictures before I was recycled and sent them to my now human so she could see how cute I used to be.

I don't think I've changed very much, do you?