A couple weeks ago, I posted a short video to show how well Henry does walking home from Grammy's on his own. It was just a snippet from the mailbox going towards home. Well, Henry can get a wild a hair and likes to follow his own agenda. (Luna was classic for this trait. She only wanted to follow her agenda and not deviate from it.) Well, Henry, too, very much likes to do what Henry likes to do. And walking to Grammy's is one of those things. There will be times when we are getting ready to take a car ride or just going to walk the neighborhood (well, that is what we THINK we are about to do) but Henry just knows that it is time to go visit Grammy. So, up the street he will trot. In the 2ish minute video, you will see Henry, in full stride, on his way to see his Grammy! While not able to see, he still knows where his Grammy lives! At the end, he is put off that she did not have the garage door opened for him and then works to navigate to go to the front door. I stopped recording when he discovered that the garage door was down. But it is plain to see that he knew where he was going and he knew when he got there. While there was a pause or two for him to reconsider his whereabouts, once he checked out his surroundings, he easily got back on track.
We recently shared that Henry is named after Grammy's side of the family. Well, another little tidbit about the "Henry" family....they have a special walk that only Henrys do. It is most notable when they walk away from a situation while possessing a stubborn attitude and Henry has mastered this walk. He owns it like he is a true Henry. The video shows the Henry walk. Do you think there was a chance in hell that I would have been able to redirect Henry to anywhere but Grammy's house at that moment? No way. He is Henry family-style stubborn. The Henrys like to label it as being strong in their convictions (as opposed to stubborn). No matter what you call it, Henry has it. Henry is a true Henry and nothing can stop him from seeing his Grammy!
It's been a long wait for Terry and Christie, but we are here now, answering their questions from 2 whole weeks ago!
We will start with the questions from Terry. She asked about the pugs, especially as puppies, if they ever got under foot and caused tripping hazards. Uh yeah!! Quite often, actually. There was even one time when Ben got stepped on and we had to take him to the vet because we thought we broke his foot! Surprisingly, our vet (in Maryland) was bordering on scolding us for being careless. I was kind of shocked to be honest. Of all things for her to get fussy about I would not have thought THIS would be the thing. In cases like this, accidents happen and we were always diligent about paying attention to where they were and dodged them regularly. But when you have more than one dog and they stick closely together that can double, triple or quadruple your changes of someone taking a tumble. Fortunately Benny was ok but they would not be pugs unless they were underfoot! So yes, Terry! For sure we have had a mishap or 100 involving the pugs invading our personal space. #wink It sounds like this was commonplace at your home, too.
Terry also asked about teeth brushing. The only thing worse, for us, than trimming their nails was brushing their teeth! I would not say that we were diligent with this feat but for the first 7-8 years we did attempt to be relatively consistent with this but our consistency would have been every 2 months. That is a poor record by any vet's standards. But at the time we thought that was the best we could do but it wasn't. We totally could have done better. We did have their teeth cleaned by the vet every 1-3 years until about age 9-10 where they were put under anesthesia and while there is always a risk with that and not to mention that it is pricey, we felt long term it would (and we believe did/has) benefited them. It is very common for poor dental health to cause other very serious medical conditions.
To further our soapbox position, if we had not had Sol's teeth cleaned this way, they would not have discovered her oral cancer and left untreated she would have likely died even sooner and/or at least would have been sicker/less treatable once it would have become more noticeable on an awake check up. Shortly after they discovered her cancer, they removed half of her lower jaw and she was literally almost no worse for the wear. This was discovered during her dental cleaning. So, this is another reason to consider going under. But it is true, anesthesia is always risky, especially for pugs. If you opt not to do dental cleanings, then we do strongly recommend diligent teeth brushing. Again, we are not veterinarians and we can only offer our history as example. With everything else, consult your vet. To avoid so much extra risk, try to schedule it with something else that may be a problem. For example, we would get a teeth cleaning done if they were a bit overdue if they also had a mass cell tumor that needed to be removed and biopsied. It was a 2-for-1 scenario. If someone had to go under anyway, get in there and do it all! Good luck, Terry. No matter your choice, you are doing your best for your baby.
Christie posed an interesting question. She asked if any of our pugs have ever had the need to rub all over the laundry (especially sheets--as in the bedding at bedtime including pillows). It was interesting to hear that only Olive does this at her home. And Vito and Luigi had never had the urge. Well, Christie, as you suggested, I am of a mind, too that this is a chick thing. Moreso, though, it is a dominant trait dog thing (which we have seen personally more in girl pugs). And while none of our pugs have ever done it with the bed sheets, Luna had done with things that she wanted to mark or dominate. Her special roll in items included dead fish and bird poop (that also wreaked of dead fish). But she could be caught giving a little hump, butt bump or marking roll on certain people, dog beds or favorite toys. I think maybe your little Olive is telling everyone else that sleeps in your bed that SHE is the top dog with you. Just my own philosophy. I would be curious to know if other than laundry and bedding, does she do this on anything else? But usually it is a sign that she is owning whatever she rolls on. I would put a few bucks on the bet that says Olive is a little diva. Would I win that bet? Loved that question, Christie! You come up with some doozies and we appreciate it!
Thank you all for not leaving us questionless. Christie, we will address the song question next week in a full post either in ASK OBP or as a separate post. We have not forgotten, your question. And we did promise that once this gets boring and/or played out that we will take a different path. So, no pressure. #KeepingItFreshForNow
We had the luxury of observing an awesome sunset at Reed Canal Park recently. We took several photos, but one of the photos, especially, captured what seemed to be a beautiful moment. It seems that Henry is just overlooking the lake, taking in the smells and reflecting on how far he has come in the last year.
This time last year he was in the middle of chemotherapy and not responding to it very well at all. Now he is strong. He's taking walks. He's eating, Enjoying car rides with his head out the window. Sometimes it's nice to just look back and see how far we've all come. With that also comes appreciation. We have appreciated you all for your kind words and overall support. There have been days when reading the comments has literally been what kept us going. So thank you for filling our tanks with the gas we have needed to keep the fuel burning to help our last pug standing be all that he can be. #Here'sToHenry and #Here'sToTheReadersToo #HenryStrong
We received an email from Martha who requested that I follow up a little more on one of the Ask OBP questions. The question had to do with nicknames. We ran down the list of nicknames of our pugs and Cupid and we were hoping that you all would chime in with a comment about what you all have nicknamed your own troops. So, I wanted to specifically extrapolate that portion of the post and ask you all to share your pugs names and their nicknames. We think everyone would get a big hit from reading the names and how the nicknames came to be.
Whenever we take Henry out to a place that has a high concentration of mulch, we are not sure how it happens, but invariably Henry will back wash all of his sniffs into his water bowl! While he never really leaves clean water behind, something about high mulch content locations make for super grotesque water! We had to take a photo of it to show. How are your all's pugs with the back wash issue? Luna had always been super gross with it but Benny was pretty good about taking in water and not leaving much behind and Henry had always been stellar in that category, too. Really, a lot of it has come with Henry's aging. In general, just as they get older, they get sloppier. Cupid is that way with her food but not with water. I know that aging brings less mobility and the weakening of overall skills but I am not so sure that this is Henry's deal. At home he can be ok but something about mulch brings out the chunks.#Ew
As I take Henry every morning to City Center, I try to make each trip a little different than the one before. He, too, tries to "make them his own". Some days he walks wonderfully and is happy to be there, other days he is groggy or confused or just not thrilled to be out and about.On occasion, he will even just hop out of the car, pee and walk right back to the door as though I took him 2 miles from home just to go potty!
Well, on a less productive visit to City Center, I needed to document how far we walked. Or should I say, how far we did not walk? Henry walked about 5-6 parking spaces and landed on the up arrow in the road. And there he stopped. Just stared off vision-less into the distance. No matter which way I coaxed him to go, he just wanted to stand on the painted arrow. So, there we stood and then we went home. I took the long way home so that he could have some sniffortunities and get some stimulation in that way. Some days are a success, other days, you just stand on a painted arrow, staring off in a different direction, refusing to obey the direction the arrow tells you you should be headed.
Welcome back to answers to your questions! Without even knowing it, Gina has asked a very personal questions about how the pugs got their names and if there is a significance to their names. This is a good question, Gina and we are happy to answer. I will share this in an out of order fashion, though. Gina mentioned that she already knew how Cupid got her name (short recap: she was sprung form the pound on Valentine's Day). But it is true, we have never really shared the story behind the names of the pugs.
I will begin with Luna. Luna came to us as Luna. That is what her name was in her original home and the rescue group left it as Luna. We actually were not in love with that name initially, but did not want to change it since it had been her name for 2 years. If we adopted a 2 year old child, we probably wouldn't change the child's name. You grow and learn your name and we wouldn't have wanted our own name to be changed, so we left her name as Luna. The reality was, though, Luna did not know her own name. We totally could have changed it. And in a sense, we did. Luna grew into knowing her name as being Looney (and only when spoken at a certain pitch). She never really learned her "proper" name of Luna. And even though we did not love the name Luna at first, we grew to love the name because of how much we grew to love Luna herself. With Luna, we embraced that she was the moon (which is Luna in Spanish) since we already had the boys as our stars, we knew once we got her, we had it all. Or we thought we did.
Enter Sol. Sol came to be name Sol as Luna's complement. Adding Sol to our mix, that is when we realized that NOW we had it all. The Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Since Sol means sun in Spanish, it was a natural fit. She also fit that name. She lit up our world like the sun lit the sky. Her name was also a play on words. She was not only Sol but she was an old soul and very soulful. So, Sol it was. For the blooper tape, I will share that our second choice for a name for her was Vada. Can you even imagine? That name now seems ridiculously unfitting.
Now the boys, Benjamin and Henry. From the "man on the street" we used to get a lot of questions about the names of the pugs. It did not make sense to many folks that we had 2 people names and 2 pet names. Well, that is because the boys are indeed named after "people" in a sense. It is a coincidence that both Grammy and G'Ma have boy maiden names. Grammy's maiden name is Henry. G'Ma's maiden name is Benjamin. Hence, the boys were given family names.
The irony of this is that the boys so lived by those family traits that even if they were grown from our own genes, they could not more have been more like the familial side they were named after. From personalities to health issues, to life span, they fit each side of the family for which they were named. We got Benjamin one day before Henry and without seeing Henry first, we gambled and gave Benjamin his name. Henry, by default, would just be Henry. We nailed it. They were perfectly named. We often wonder if we had named them the opposite way if we would have been able to find family traits that made the names fit the other way around. Of course in our convoluted heads we probably could but we are glad that we don't have to do so. To us, their names fit them like a family glove. The naming of the pugs would not have made the blog other than the Ask OBP since it is more about the peeps than pugs, but it interesting story. (At least to us! Ha!)
Another question came from Sandra B. She asked about Sol and if her fur was often shed all over our fawn colored home. And what was so weird about Solsey, was that she barely shed. She had a coat like a sheep! It was a few layers yet never seemed to shed. It was very unpuglike that she barely shed. So, while it would have made sense that black fur would have been all over the various shades of fawn, there were only a few stray black hairs around the house. And truthfully, those could have come from Henry! In his younger years, he had a fair amount of black hairs tucked within his fawn coat. Good question, though, Sandra!
Terry and Christie also had questions but I am going to store those until NEXT week! Sorry to leave you hanging but since I have been playing Dear Abby so well and answering all the questions early that I'd better leave a couple in the hopper! Sorry to delay your answers to what are all really good questions! See us in Ask #10, though and they will be answered.
The questions just keep getting better. So, thanks for asking! We love answering them and we always wonder what stone have we left unturned that you simply had to ask. Until next week, feel free to ask.
