Happy Valentine's Day!

I think Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday photo shoot that I do with Spanky. Don't know why, but maybe it's because I'm a mother of 2 boys and never got to do the girly dress up thing with them. So Spanky puts up with my crap every year, although this year he was a bit impatient because he knew I got him a new toy. We named his stuffed pug Ginger, after the cute little female pug down the street (she's a little gal, only 12 pounds, compared to Spanky's 23 lb. frame.)

Enjoy!

Hurry up and take the picture so I can play with my toy!

This is my mad look when I'm tired of taking pictures

I'm really wiped out. Can I have my toy now?

Finally, playtime!

Previous Valentines pictures:

2011

2010

What's the deal with dog parks?

Spanky at the Great Bark Dog Park, Lafayette, CO

I’ll admit I never understood the need for dog parks prior to becoming a dog owner. What’s the big deal? Dogs just run around, sniff each others butts, maybe run after a few balls, while owners just stand around and brag about how smart their dog is. In a way, it didn’t seem much different than parents taking their kids to a playground (except for the butt sniffing part.) But once Spanky came into our lives, I realized what the fuss was about. Dog parks are like Disneyland for dogs. Running off leash is total freedom. Sure, Spanky can run around in our rather small backyard, but running around in a dog park is an entirely different experience. It reminds me of when I used to take my kids to Chuck E. Cheese. They came home feeling wiped out and happy. Same way with dogs, except they don't come with bunch of junky prizes, just a feeling of contentment and maybe some muddy feet.

We started taking Spanky when he was about 8 months old to a local dog park about 10 minutes away in a nearby town since our little town didn’t have one at the time. I was a bit nervous because so many people had warned me that dog parks were bad places for little dogs. Well, we didn’t have any issues, other than me nearly getting peed on by dogs a couple of times (I have since learned that dogs love to pee on the picnic table at this particular park and if you get hit by their pee, well, that’s your own damn fault.) But this dog park didn’t turn out to be a good choice. You see, pugs aren’t typically run and fetch type dogs, and that’s all people really did with their dogs at this park. So we tried out a few other parks. We found one out near where we took our youngest son for his weekly sax lesson every Saturday. It’s a bit of a drive, but since we were in the area every week, it worked out fine.

I swear Spanky must have a little mental calendar. He knows exactly what day is dog park day from the moment he gets up. Perhaps it’s because I’m not getting up at the God-awful hour of 5:45 to drag my boys out of bed. But even so, he seems charged up and ready to go. I was in my closet getting dressed last weekend and he was in the other room. All I said was, “Spanky, time to go to the dog park” and he came tearing out of the other room, and started pumping my leg with a big goofy pug grin. Okay, sometimes I think Spanky is a little bit dumb, but he proved me wrong in this case.

The sniffing game

One thing you should know is that Colorado, although known for its mountains, is also pretty brown and ugly for a good part of the year. We live just north of Denver, east of the Rockies, and everything here is pretty flat and,well, almost like living in the Midwest. It’s a lot different from my native perpetually green Pacific Northwest. This particular dog park is basically just a couple of acres located in a flat, grassy field. Nothing spectacular. It does have an awesome view of Long’s Peak (the prominent 14,000 foot peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.) For Spanky, it’s the perfect park. A trail loops around and he just trots along, coming up behind unsuspecting people and sniffing their legs (he’s rather skittish and likes to sniff people first, especially the ladies in areas he shouldn't be sniffing,  before letting them pet him.) My husband and I hit up Starbucks before we come, so we just take a leisurely stroll, enjoying the view and drinking our coffee. Spanky gets his off-leash time and he seems perfectly content to stay a few paces ahead of us. Some dogs race around checking each other out and playing, but Spanky generally prefers to hang out with us, and have dogs come up to him, rather than seeking them out. While he has barked at a few dogs (check out the pic of him below with the Great Dane) he’s never had one altercation. Nor have I ever seen a dog fight here. Dogs seem to know the rules and have a great time.

"Who's your mamma?"

I now get the deal with dog parks. Getting a daily walk is great, but running free is much better. If you’ve got a dog, and you haven’t taken it to a dog park, you owe to both of you to get out and visit one.

P.S. Don't wear your $100 jeans or designer sweats though. I am always getting slobbered on by big dogs and the other weekend one dog thought I was a tree. I guess that's what I get for being tall.

The one and only Bubba

Bubba and his trademark light green eyes
As I gaze into Bubba’s eyes I realize how lucky we are to have this wonderful cat. When it comes to cat temperaments you couldn’t ask for much better. He is mellow and easy going and rarely complains or makes a fuss (yes, cats do fuss!) Bubba came to us about 6 years ago when we adopted him from the San Jose Humane Society. We had just recently put down our long shaggy haired black cat Fay Fay (a Chinese name that translates roughly into “Fat Cat” – he wasn’t really fat, just fluffy!) My boys were extremely sad so I took them to the Humane Society on a Saturday “just to look.” Well, a wonderful volunteer listened to our preference (big black cats) and steered us over to cat named Mombassa. It was love at first sight. We wanted him right then and there. But I told my boys we should wait and ask their dad first. Well, my husband came back with me the next Monday. It didn’t take him long to see that “Mombassa” was the cat for us. We also picked out another black cat (Larry) to be his companion. Larry was still fairly young and seemed to have a friendly personality, but we later discovered he was somewhat skittish. However, he and Mombassa did get along, so that was great.

Anyhow, the name Mombassa just didn’t seem to be a fit. We called him “Momba” for a while but then it somehow changed to “Bubba” or sometimes simply “Bub.” He’s a long-bodied cat with an easy-going attitude that’s rare in the cat world, and the name Bubba captured his personality perfectly.

This personality, in turn, turned out to be a blessing when we got our pug Spanky, who was a mere 9-weeks old at the time when we brought him home. Spanky loved Bubba like a big brother and would lick his ears until they were soaking wet. I have to admit I was deathly afraid that the cats would scratch Spanky’s big bulgy eyes but that was never the case. Larry stayed his distance from Spanky but he is much more tolerant of him now. Bubba, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable around him and has only raised his paw once or twice as a warning when Spanky got a bit overzealous and playful with him.


Spanky as a puppy, sharing his bed with Bubba
Sadly, though, things are not going so well for Bubba. We noticed that one of his eyes didn’t look right this last week. He had been squinting it a bit recently, too. So I took him in and had it checked out. The vet says he doesn’t have glaucoma, which is good news, but the bad news is she couldn’t see his retina. She feels he might have a tumor, but I wasn’t ready to sink hundreds of dollars into finding out whether this was the case or not, as the only cure for that would be to remove his eye. I did agree to test him for toxoplasmosis, which can affect the eyes and is treatable. This can be picked up by cats that kill rodents, which Bubba had done a few times. The last mouse or vole he killed was a few months ago, so it could be a possibility. They sent his blood sample up to Colorado State in Fort Collins to be tested and we should know next week. In the meantime we’re all spending more time with Bubba, feeding him his favorite canned food, and treasuring the moments we spend with him. I hope we can treat his condition because I know Spanky cares for him, in his doggy way.


Spanky & Bub hanging out together. Notice that Bubba's left eye looks a little strange.

Two pugs named Spanky?

Some of you follow me & Spanky on Flickr under the profile name Chica-tica. But in case you've noticed other pics showing up on Flickr with a pug named Spanky, well, chances are they're the same Spanky! My oldest son is quite the photography buff, with a "real" camera (Canon DSLR.) He recently borrowed an 80 mm lens. In the photography world this is known as a "bokehlicious" lens. What's that, you ask? The Urban Dictionary explains it quite well:

In photography, Bokeh is a Japanese word - the transliteration of a Japanese word for "blur" - describing the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens. For example, in some images the background may be deliberately caused to be out-of-focus to reduce distractions and to emphasize the primary subject.

He had a great time with it and posted some awesome shots of Spanky. Check them out . . .

(You may click the photos to see them bigger and better on Flickr.)

Tebowmania

Today I'm going to divert from my usual topic of pugs and talk about Tebowmania. If you don't follow NFL football or don't live in the Denver area, let me briefly fill you in.  Tim Tebow (quarterback) won the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore at Florida. He was drafted in 2010 by the Broncos in the first round (25th pick) but didn't start a game until the very end of the season last year. This season he didn't start until the sixth game. Things were a bit shaky at first, with one win in Miami and a loss against Detroit. But things turned around the next week in Oakland and Tim led the Broncos on a 6-game winning streak. Tebowmania hit Denver. Didn't matter if you didn't follow football - everyone knew about Tim, the golden boy with good morals and equally good looks to match. However, Tebowmania started to wain when the Broncos posted 3 consecutive losses. No fear, though. It has returned, at least for a while, as the Broncos managed to get into the playoffs and score a win against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

 

My contribution to Tebowmania has been these two pictures of my neighbor's twin grandbabies. The first one I did on my own -- just a spur of the moment thing -- adding a few speech bubbles. The second was actually requested by the mom of the babies.

Shower Day for Spanky

 Another one of the reasons we were attracted to the pug breed was their relatively low maintenance grooming routine. We once had a very shaggy long-haired cat – probably with a bit of Maine Coon in it – that was an absolute pain to keep groomed. Huge chunks of matted fur, puked-up hair balls, not to mention hair everywhere. Well, we dodged the matted fur issue and the middle-of-the-night wake up calls of a vomiting cat, but the shedding issue we did not. I was aware that pugs shed, but until you own one, you may not realize the extent of that shedding.

Of course, we could brush him on a daily basis, but we weren’t very good at that.  So early on we decided we’d try to get Spanky used to a monthly bath. Not only did it help rid him of a lot of loose hair, but it also made him smell nicer. Not that pugs smell bad – I don’t think they do. But my husband thinks he starts to smell too “doggy” after a few weeks. He prefers the scent of our neighbor’s Malti-poo that has longer curly locks, which although pretty, are not water resistant like Spanky’s.  But it’s this water resistance that results in that sometimes musky smell.

Spanky's first bath

When Spanky was a little guy bathing was a fairly simple task that was easily managed in our large master bathroom tub. But as he got bigger, he jumped around more and resisted a bit. So one day my husband took Spanky in the shower with him. This proved to be the perfect solution. We tried some dog shampoos, but we found that one of my “moisturizing” shampoos (because it’s soooo dry here in Colorado) worked better. He just sort of walks around in the stall while my husband showers, and then when he’s done, he shampoos Spanky. A whole load of hair comes off and even more when we towel dry him. I then follow up with a combing, using a rubber-type brush to get even more hair and finish by putting ear drops in his ears. Having floppy ears, Spanky is susceptible to ear infections, so doing this as a preventative measure is an important step.

Must haves! Comb, Ear Drops

The shower is also a good place to give his wrinkles a really good cleaning. Some pugs have more wrinkles than others. Spanky happens to be a pug with very deep wrinkles below his eyes which can get  filled with crud. I do try to wipe his wrinkles out on a daily basis since he gets lots of eye boogers. I usually manage to wipe off these guys, but sometimes Spanky “washes” his face with his paws (I swear he learned this from our cats) and his deep wrinkles can have some pretty nasty junk in them.

Waiting for his turn

Of course, your pug won’t smell good right away. It takes about an hour for the fur to dry completely and until then, the musky wet-dog smell will prevail.

yum!

Now, does Spanky like to shower? Hard to say. His tail flops down when we shampoo him, which is always the sign of an unhappy pug. And we know he hates his ear drops. But after that, he seems to go crazy, zipping around the house and acting very playful. Of course, our long-haired cat did that too every time he pooped, so maybe it’s an animal’s way of releasing cathartic energy.

To crate or not to crate?

Lil Spanky

Bringing Spanky home from the breeder was a bit like bringing a baby home from the hospital. Being first time dog owners, there were so many unknowns, including the best way to transport him. We had a cat carrier that we put a blanket in, but he must have got car sick or was just plain scared to death.  The poor little guy vomited a few times in the 3-hour ride back from Burlington, so by the time we got home, both the carrier and Spanky needed a bit of cleaning.

Fortunately, he seemed excited to explore his new surroundings and quickly did his business in the backyard. That made us happy, but we soon learned that puppies don’t always remember to hold it and so over the coming months we had to deal with many accidents in the house. In that regard, I think cats are easier. I’ve seen little teeny tiny kittens at Humane Society learn to use the litter box faster than Spanky learned to hold his little bladder. But I’ll save the joys of house breaking for another blog posting.

The big question in our mind that first day was how would Spanky do sleeping in a crate. We had decided ahead of time that we wanted to crate train Spanky as we had two cats in the house and we had visions of the three of them chasing each other in the middle of the night. At the time we only had a queen bed and there certainly was no room in it for even a small dog. And did I mention that pugs snore and can be gassy?  Plus we had steep stairs that Spanky couldn’t even initially climb up. So with all these considerations in mind, having him sleep in a crate seemed to be the logical choice.

Getting him in the crate was certainly easy enough (we started off with the cat carrier, as Spanky was only maybe four pounds at the time) and we didn’t end up with battle wounds like we did when we had to stick the cats in there. However, Spanky started whimpering and “crying” – what the heck had I signed myself up for? I had already dealt with the trials and tribulations of raising two kids, so why did I want to put myself through this again? I gave in and brought the crate up to our room the first night. He did eventually fall asleep, and even better, didn’t even need to be taken out in the middle of the night to go potty. But we didn’t like him sleeping in the room and wanted to break him of this habit quickly.

So on night #2, I left the crate in the kitchen. Once again, he started to whimper. But it was a bit better than the night before, and so like a mom trying to teach her toddler to get to sleep without a binky or in his own crib, I left Spanky in the kitchen until his whimpers died out and he went to sleep.

By night #3, Spanky happily trotted to his crate and seemed content to cozy up with his blanket. I quickly learned, too, that having some sort of chew toy made it easier in the beginning. Even better, he learned to love his crate as a safe retreat. When he was a puppy he was even fine staying in it while I went out on errands. It kept him out of trouble and from chewing up furniture and other things.

Spanky & Bubba

Eventually, I did have to get him a larger crate – it measures 21 inches high, 18 inches deep, and 24 inches wide. It’s the perfect size for him (he’s now about 23-24 lbs.) and even slides neatly under the counter desk in our kitchen, which we never used anyhow. We put a small dog bed in it so he can snuggle up and feel comfy. And here’s the funny part – Spanky is perfectly content to share it with one of our cats, Bubba, who takes the day shift in the crate, while Spanky sleeps on the couch.

Bubba in "his" crate

So in the end, crate training worked out well for us. While some folks may think it might be cruel to put a cute little dog in a cage, Spanky seems happy to go to bed there and has never caused a ruckus during the night. After all, many animals in the wild sleep in dens, so I see it as no more different than that. Besides, the few times Spanky has snuggled into bed with my husband in the morning, he has turned out to be quite the bed hog!