Sniff, sniff, sniff went the pug

Today I just wanted to celebrate the end of the school year and the beginning of my favorite time of year here in Colorado -- late spring, early summer. I hesitate to call it a season because seasons here aren't really distinct, other than winter. Most people associate Colorado with snow due to the Rocky Mountains. But after living here five years, I can tell you than the actual number of days we have snow on the ground is very little, as we get abundant sunshine and the snow in the Front Range (east of the Rockies) melts very quickly. For me, winter here is more of a "dead season." Everything is brown and since we have relatively few evergreen trees, unlike my native Oregon, it's pretty dismal looking. My husband loves the sun, but I love the green. But I guess you can't have a lot of green without a lot of rain and otherwise gloomy days.

Despite the sun, it is pretty cold for most of the winter and I have few annual flowers that come back every year. As a result, every year in late May I spend a bundle of money on planting new flowers in my flower pots. I only have one tiny section in the yard to plant flowers, as our soil is basically clay and the previous owners mostly landscaped with rocks (which, not surprisingly, are very popular in Colorado.)  I wish I could start planting sooner, but the golden rule here is to not plant before Mother's Day. Although we dodged the bullet this year, it's not at all unusual to get snow in late April or early May. Bulb flowers such as daffodils hold up well in the snow, but others may not fare so well.

Is that a flower I smell??

But getting back on the topic of pugs -- Spanky does love to sniff flowers. In fact he'll sniff and smell just about anything. It's particularly funny to hear a pug sniff. Because of their short snout, you can really hear them sniffing, more so than most other dogs. It really sounds like they're enjoying it.  Today he was particularly enraptured with my flower pots. And as the first day of summer break for my kids was a cloudy one (once again, reminding me of Oregon, where summer vacation always seemed to start on a rainy day) it made for some great pictures. Enjoy!

Life after Bubba . . . the new and improved Larry

Whenever any of my pets have died, I feel like I have been kicked in the stomach. It doesn’t get any easier, and whether they die at home or are euthanized, the feeling of not having done enough for them is still there. Last time we had a cat die (euthanized) I went out and adopted 2 cats within a week of his passing. My boys were about 10 and 7 at the time and were heartbroken, and the house felt so empty without a cat. One of those cats was Bubba, who just passed away 3 weeks ago, and the other was Larry.

Now after Bubba’s death we have our pug Spanky and Larry to keep us company. That’s not to say we don’t miss Bub. We do. Terribly. We  still share stories about his unique behavior (He didn’t make a sound when we first got him and we thought he might be deaf. Later on he turned out to be quite the “talker!”)  and how he loved to have massages where we stretched him out on his back. We could feel him vibrate and stretch while we did this.

Needless to say, we wondered how Bubba’s absence would affect Spanky and Larry. When my cat Pilar died, her companion cat Fay Fay (a Chinese name that roughly translates into Fat Cat) seemed depressed and out of it. Our kids were very young and most of our attention was focused on them. Fay Fay never seemed to be quite as happy after her death and become more of a loner. Would the same happen to Larry? He was very attached to Bubba and had little use for the rest of us, especially Spanky.

The first few days after Bubba’s death I hardly saw Larry. But he gradually started to come out. Although he had sat on the couch with Bubba and Spanky, he had been a bit nervous about doing so with  just Spanky. Part of that has to do with Spanky. He clearly was the king of the couch. But after a few attempts (careful not to sit too close to Spanky) Larry found his “spot” on the couch. Spanky seemed fine with it.

A brave Larry climbed onto my lap

 But then something very strange happened. Larry tried to sit on my lap. In the 6 years we had had Larry, he had NEVER approached me to do this. Never. But without his Bubba, Larry was clearly reaching out to us. The first time he tried this, Spanky chased him off. But he tried another time, this time when Spanky was sleepy and too tired to deal with him.

Now every few days he ventures onto my lap. This is not to say Larry has had a complete personality change. He still is much more tense and skittish than Bubba (no full body massages for him.) But he is starting to seek limited human companionship. And with no Bubba to chase and play with at night, he actually is sleeping on our bed again.

It’s a pleasant change and we’re enjoying it. Will we get him a companion kitty? The jury is still out on that. The new Larry is much more pleasant and we sort of like it like that.