MORNING PUG

This is the closest thing I've had to an adventure in awhile. I'm not sure if trying to wake a sleeping human even counts as an adventure, but I guess it's kinda funny if you don't have a pug of your own (or aren't the human being woken up).

Yeah, I know. Kinda lame. But I'm suuuuperexcited about tomorrow. First day of a new month = new recipe from the Bubba Rose cookie book!

FFF: fun at the HOM

My human hasn't touched Nikon in like forever so I didn't think we'd have any pictures for today's Freeze Frame Friday. But I guess HAL4 is full of pictures. Like these ones of me having fun at the House of Meat.

So here's me, Jack & Vegas playing with Sherman the sheep.

Dutch is a wimp so it was just me vs the crazy labradors.

Of course I totally kicked some crazy labrador butt.

Most of the time. Hello! They outweigh me by like 159 lbs.

Sherman is (was) the same size as me, but not as tough. Don't tell my human this, but remember that time her laptop got eaten? Well, it went pretty much like this. Except I didn't lay a tooth on Mac. I swear.

LUMBERJACK

My human says she doesn't have the energy these days to make us stay on the floor (I think she really just misses us) so me and Dutch are back to sleeping on her bed. It's a good thing too because Dutch really is a total bed hog and one P.L.A.Y bed is not enough when you have to share it with a spotted bed hog.

Or any bed hog, I guess.

Anyway. I was hoping my human would just forget about the whole sleeping on the floor thing, but now she has a new complaint about having dogs in her bed. And that complaint is me. Me and my snoring, I mean.

According to her, I snore like a lumberjack. I don't know what that is, but I guess me being like one wakes her up in the middle of the night. And the beginning of the night. And the end of the night. Pretty much all night long, she says.

The weird thing is, I never used to snore. And now I'm a lumberjack? Google says it might be from getting fat, but I don't think I'm that much fatter than I was before the snoring started. Weird right? Like one of those medical mystery things on TV.

Does anyone else here snore like a lumberjack? Were you born that way, or did it happen when you were, say, 2 1/2 years old and a little bit tubier than normal??

NOT VERY WOLFY

Hiking with The Man.

Sorry for spending two whole days talking about how much I weigh. Since my human has been out of commission, I haven't had many adventures. And when you're not adventuring, really the only thing left to do is eat. Right?

I did go on one adventure when I was at the HOM though. The Man took me on one of my human's favorite hikes. It's long and goes to the top of a mountain and The Man said both of those things would keep me from getting too fat. On the way to the top, he took a video of me that made my human laugh.

Before I tell you the story behind the video, my human says I have to warn any human video watchers that it's kinda gross. Like, blood and guts kind of gross. But if you can get over the grossness, I guess it's kinda funny.

OK. So, back at Christmas my human got a book called Inside of a Dog and part of it talks about how dogs might be related to wolves, but we are soooooo far from being wolves it's not even funny. Because I guess when humans started breeding for things like smushed snouts and spots, a lot of the wolf-ness got left behind or something. So, from the way we look to the way we act to the things we eat - today's dog is not very wolfy.

Here I am being not very wolfy:



And I guess a video of me barking at a pile of wild meat is kinda funny because it if I had any wolfness left in me, the last thing I would do to a pile of fresh meat is stand there and bark at it.

UHMM...

Thanks everybody (again and forever!) for all your kindness and love. It's made everyone here at Casa de Puglet feel really warm+fuzzy at a time when some extra warm+fuzziness is kinda needed. You are all ridiculously superawesome.

Now. Speaking of kinda needing things... I might need some care packages full of food because I may never get eat again. Because it turns out that 26.1 was my BEFORE weight. As in my weight BEFORE the House of Meat. Your comments had me totally convinced that 26.1 isn't so bad, but then The Man had to go and tell my human the truth. And the truth is 28.8!

I totally forgot we took two trips to the dog food store/scale - once for food and once to get me a name tag because mine fell off or something. I also kinda forgot about the giant bag of cookies I ate a few weeks ago when I escaped from the dog pod and, well, helped myself to some snacks when no one was looking.

I think I was doing OK in the weight department until my human started leaving bags of cookies lying around. Between the stray cookies and a week at the HOM, I've never been fatter. My human says it'll be peas and carrots until my skull harness buckles :(

PS
I haven't been commenting because I'm trying not to wear out my human's thumbs, but I don't need her dumb thumbs to read so I am reading.

I'M BAAACK (and fatter than ever!)

Thanks sooooo much for being so worried about us, for saying so many nice things about missing me, for being really nice to Jack (he's never been on the internet before), and for coming back. I'm not 100% sure what's been going on with my human (I heard her say something about gory details and didn't want to ask) but she's doing OK enough now to let me use her thumbs again.

So. Other than missing me missing you, you haven't missed much. Our stay at the HOM was pretty much the same as always: way too short, ridiculously fun and full of food. Tasty food. Meaty food.

As always, The Man promised not to feed us too much and like always, he totally broke that promise. He also promised to pick up a bag of dog food before bringing us home and you know what a trip to the food store means. Yup. A weigh in.

Are you serious??

Dude totally overfeeds us... and then sticks my butt on a freaking scale. Yeah. He said it would make my human feel better to see that I didn't get fat. Except, uh, I kinda did.

Hello 26.1! Ugh.

Luckily The Man doesn't know about the 25 pound rule so we got loads of snacks at the dog food store (uh, more on that tomorrow). He also made me pose with a box of diet food. Said it would make my human laugh and feel better. No idea why, but it totally did.

My human is super happy about being back and feeling almost human again so she hasn't say a word about the whole 26.1 thing. But if she does, I'm going to make her feel extremely guilty for shipping us off to the House of Meat to get fat. And for making us sleep on the floor when we got home. AND for making me miss everyone. AND for making you go though withdrawal. AND...

HI INTERNET

This is Jack. From the Meat House? I'm the Man's dog. The Pug wanted me to let you know he will be gone again tomorrow and is really sad about it. He promised he will be back Monday and wants everyone to promise they will come back then too. Something about dumb thumbs. I don't know what that means but he said you should know.

Woofs!

Jack Labrador

M.I.A AT THE H.O.M.

It feels like an eternity or something since I've been here. Me and Dutch took a superlast minute trip to the House of Meat last week and just got home last night. The Man is reaally good at feeding us (too good, the scale says) but I've totally missed my own human and have some serious snuggling to catch up on.

I've really missed you all too (!) and will be back for real tomorrow to fill you on on everything we ate - uhm, I mean did, while we were gone.

YEAR OF THE DOG BED

Sorry I've been kinda MIA lately. My human hasn't been feeling good and if she doesn't feel good, neither do her thumbs (and we all know I can't do this without the thumbs). Anyway. Because of this, it's way past New Year and I'm just now getting around to telling you about my human's stupid revolution: to get more sleep. Or better sleep. Or something like that.

And I guess one of the biggest things getting between her and sleep is Dutch, a.k.a the spotted bed hog. She's tried everything to keep him from taking over the whole entire bed, but somehow he always manages to squish her off into a tiny little corner so he can hog the rest. After much debate, my human decided to make 2011 the Year of the Dog Bed. As in we will no longer be sleeping in her bed. I have no idea why I have to suffer because Dutch is a bed hog, but I've been told that from now on, we'll be sleeping on our own bed.


On. the. floor.

You know I was *not* happy to hear this. Not happy. Not at all. But my human promised she'd find us a nice dog bed to make our nights on the floor totally comfortable. Yeah. Right.

I tried to explain that there is nothing comfortable about the floor, but she said a good bed can make the floor a perfectly good place to sleep. Yeah. Sure it can. If you're not the one who actually has to sleep there. I wanted to tell her that perhaps she would like to try sleeping on the floor, but before I could say a word she went out to the car and came back with a giant box. It had the word P.L.A.Y. written on it so I thought it must be something fun. I forgot all about the floor situation and got all excited...

Until she opened the box and pulled out a freaking dog bed.

Yeah. And before I could ask her what happened to the P.L.A.Y part, she started telling me all sorts of great things about the new bed. Like how it was inspired by a ridiculously cute little Pug named Momo. And how it's made out of soda bottles, is totally earth-friendly, but still super comfy and very cool.

Honestly? I didn't really care about any of these things. I was about to spend the rest of my life sleeping on the floor. Who can you think about looking cool and saving the planet when you've just been demoted to floor-level??

Momo says...

Then I saw a little tag hanging from the new bed. There was a picture of a pug on it. Momo. The tag said Momo thinks the bed is too cool and I'm a lucky dog. I think Momo is pretty insanely cute, and she doesn't look like the kind of girl who'd tell you stuff that isn't true. So I hopped on the bed to see just how comfortable it could possibly be.

And you know what? The thing is ridiculously comfortable. Like, even more comfortable than my human's stupid human bed. It's squishy, but not too squishy. Soft and fuzzy, but not so fuzzy that bits of fuzz get stuck to my eyeballs (I hate when that happens). It was so comfy that I fell asleep in the middle of supermodeling. Falling asleep in front of Nikon is like falling asleep in front of a food bowl. It just doesn't happen.


But it did.

Here's the thing though - even though I reeeally like my new P.L.A.Y. bed, I don't want my human to know it. I can tell she feels really bad about demoting us to the floor because she's been piling on the guilt love (and guilt love means guilt cookies). I say let her be guilty if it means I'm going to get more cookies. Y'know?

Tag? What tag?

I'd love to give you more details about my new bed but I kinda had to destroy the tag because it said all sort of good things about P.L.A.Y and their comfy beds. I want my human to think I'm miserable, remember? But you should check the beds out for yourself on their website www.petplaysf.com. Especially if your people make you sleep on the floor like a dog. Because if you have to sleep on the floor, you should totally have one of these beds.

100% wordless

LET'S TALK SLEEP

Since everyone is already leaky about Stubby, I'm thinking now might be a good time to talk about something nobody wants to think about: saying goodbye when it's time to go to sleep forever.

In the weeks before Stubby went to sleep, his human and my human did a lot of talking. I didn't hear or understand all of it, but I want to share what I do know. Because even though my human says we're all going to live forever, I know she's totally lying.

KNOW WHEN TO SAY WHEN
One thing I heard our humans talk about was how to know when it's time for the final sleep to come. From what I understand, this is a very hard and complicated decision. You don't want to wait too long, but even too long doesn't feel long enough when you don't want to say goodbye. My human used to work in vet hospitals and says the only thing sadder than seeing someone go to sleep was seeing someone who needed to go to sleep *not* go sleep soon enough. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I think it's really important.

SOMETIMES SLEEP IS A GOOD THING
I heard my human tell Stubby's mom a story about her old dog, Moby. Moby was 11 when they found out she had cancer in her bones. The vet said she had 2 weeks to live unless they took away one of her legs to make it better (maybe, for a little while). My human wanted Moby to be around forever, but dogs like Moby only live 10-12 years and she was already almost 12. So my human decided to not to fight the cancer and let Moby have 11+ happy years instead of 11+ happy ones... plus a great big surgery and who knows what else and for how long.

MAKE THE END THE BEST END EVER
Instead of arguing with the stupid bone cancer, my human decided to make the last 2 weeks of Moby's life the best 2 weeks of her life. She got to eat everything and anything she wanted. Ice cream, hamburgers, people cookies - you name it, she ate it. She was allowed to chase the cat and snack on the forbidden kitty rocca. She got went for illegal off-leash walks on nice golf course grass and played with loads of toys from people who came to visit and say goodbye.

SAYING GOODBYE
You might not have any warning before it's time for sleep to come, but if you do have time to get ready for it, get ready for it. After exactly 2 weeks, Moby was ready to go to sleep. My human had the vet come to the house so Moby's last memory wouldn't be of a trip to the vet (even though she was one of those weird dogs who loved going to the vet). The vet helped her go to sleep in her own bed filled with toys. When Moby didn't wake up, the vet took her away and turned her into ashes (please don't ask me how that works).

Moby, a few days before going to sleep forever.

REMEMBERING
My human says Moby is gone, but will never be forgotten. It's been 8 years since Moby went to sleep, but my human still has her old dogtags and little bits of Moby ashes (the rest are sprinkled all over the country, in places she's lived and places Moby used to visit). She has pictures of Moby (even though they're not that great and she wishes there were more) and 11+ years of really good memories.

I hope some of what I learned about the Final sleep helps someone out there. If you know something that might help some more, please let everyone here know.

STUBBY

The world lost a very special pug on Friday. His name is Stubby and he was one of my best friends.

Stubby was a wise, kind, and all around incredibly awesome pug. He taught me many things about the world. Like how to be generous. And how to be green. He brought many joys into my life, like Popeye's nuggets and true bromance.

Stubby lived a long and awesome life full of love, good food, and adventure. On the day he went to sleep, his humans made him bacon for breakfast and took him to Popeye's for lunch. I hope my life is as long as good as Stubby's and ends with a tasty meal of bacon and nuggets.

Stubbs - dude, you will be missed by all.

FFF: freeeeezing!

OK. I don't know what it's like where you are, but here in my house it is freee-zing. Freezing! I've been bundled up in blankets like one of those Extra Terrestrials since we got back and as much as I like to snuggle, I'm really not liking it.

The temperature thing in the car said 42 this morning. My human says that's not exactly freezing, but it's definitely the coldest I've ever been in my whole entire life.

The House of Meat has a chimney with real fire in it. Warm fire. Fire that's warmer than any blanket. I want to go back there. And so does Dutch.

Is it totally freezing where you live??

WRONG SIDE OF A LOCKED DOOR

I don't know what the delay was, but my human finally picked us up at the House of Meat last night. I'll skip the part where she says I'm looking a little tubier than when she dropped me off, and the part where The Man totally lies about how much and we ate while we were there and go straight to what happened when we got home.

Or tried to get home. Because when we got there, we couldn't get inside. Yeah. My human's key refused to go in the lock. At first she thought maybe her brain was just being gimpy - that she was using the wrong key. Totally possible, but my human's gimpiness wasn't the problem. The problem was the lock.

It was cold and dark and we wanted in. My human was totally not happy. So I suggested we break into our house. I've seen people on TV do it with a credit card. You just slide it in the door crack, wiggle the handle and the door pops right open. Uh, unless you have something called a dead-bolt lock, which is what we have. Then you're kinda screwed.

Unless you also have a dog door.

Luckily, we have one of those too. And because the only way to get into our backyard is through a special entrance that only we can get into, my human doesn't always lock the dog door. And luckily, our dog door is big enough for Dutch to go through. Because that means my human can fit though it too (she was VERY happy about this).

So, my human is home. And even though there was a little bit of swearing at having to squirm through our dog door at midnight, I think she's happy to be back. She promises to help me get caught up with all the comments I missed as soon as she gets caught up on the gazillion unread emails in her own inbox.

Sigh.

Must be really nice to have thumbs....

99% WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

No thumbs, no words. HUGE sigh.

LOVE YOUR HUMAN

I don't know about you, but I'm a people pug. I love people as much as - well, almost as much as - I love, say, bacon. I pretty much love everybody, but I do have favorite people. Y'know, the ones I go extra crazy over.

Like The Man. And Miley's mom. And Bellatrix's mom. And this lady in my neighborhood who stops to scratch my butt every time she shes me. I really love her. But I never thought of my own human as someone to go nuts over. Not because I don't love her or anything. But because I see her like all the time. I mean, you can't really go crazy over someone you see every minute of the day.

But my human has been on vacation since last year and I'm totally starting to miss her. Like, really miss her. Even though I love The Man and The House of Meat is ridiculously fun, I kinda want my human back. Like, now.

I miss the stupid names she calls me (Pugaroo. Pugalicious. Puggers.), the way she grabs my ears and scrunches up my head. I miss the way she says Perfect! when I strike a cool pose for Nikon, and the look on her face when I Jimmy. And I really miss her thumbs and the way they help me talk to you.

Sigh.

The Man says my human comes back tonight and I cannot wait to go completely nuts over her. She loves it when I cackle from happiness and I'm going to cackle like I've never cackled before so she knows how much I love and missed her.

I'm pretty sure our people know we love them even if we don't go gaga over them every minute of the day. But it probably wouldn't hurt to go nuts over your human for no good reason every now and then. Like today :)

HELLO 2011!

I hope everyone had the best 2010 ever. If I remember right, every time a new year starts you're supposed to make some revolutions. Y'know, fix the stuff you didn't do right the year before. Or something like that.

My human is still on vacation, so I'm not exactly sure what kind of revolutions I'm supposed to make. But Google says most New Year's revolutions don't last very long, so I guess I can make them be I want. So are my revolutions to make 2011 the best year ever made:

1. Eat more bacon
2. Convince my human to make every single one of the 100 recipes in the Bubba Rose biscuit cookbook
3. Be nicer to Dutch
4. Make a new friend each day
5. Be under 25lbs at all times
6. Become famous. Again.
7. Learn how to use my thumbs

I'm going to try reeeaally hard to make #1, #2 and #7 last all year. Maybe #3 too. Google says you have a better chance at making them last if you tell other people what they are. So... who made revolutions for 2011??