Wednesday, January 7, 2009
After much debate we finally chose a name for our new foster. We decided to call her Sol.
Picking a name was much harder than I anticipated. We would look at her, shout out a suggestion, look at her again, then give a nay. Nothing really seemed to fit her. We eventually narrowed down a list of names that we liked and one evening just before bed we decided on the name Molly. She was named Molly for about 30 minutes while we were awake that night and for about the 7 hours we were asleep. However, when we woke up we soon realized that our friend’s parents have a dog name Molly. We didn’t want to “copy” so we set out to find a new name for our sweet, little foster.
After going through a dozen more name choices we finally chose Sol. Why Sol you ask? Well, the obvious reason is that Sol in Spanish means sun, and the new little girl certainly is a ray of sunshine, but Luna in Spanish means moon. So, if we named her Sol, we would have the sun and the moon.
While that reasoning is all well and good, it was the main reason we weren’t going to name her Sol. Sol was a name that was thrown into the hat almost immediately. But, we always dismissed it because we shouldn’t give her a name that pairs her up with Luna if we really intended to live up to our foster parent duties and send her to a forever home one day.
But, we just couldn’t help it. The name Sol just kept coming up and no other name really seemed to fit. You can look at her and tell she has many years of pug wisdom under her belt and I think the name Sol helps convey that. She is most definitely an “Old Soul”.
So for now, at least, we have the moon and the sun all resting easy at our house.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Over the holidays, we found some time to play some board games. Of course the pugs were interested and Henry wanted to play Sorry! with us. I think he thinks we are cheating. Looking forward to your captions in the comments.
Monday, January 5, 2009
As you might have guessed from last week’s post, our itch to foster is being scratched. We never really made a decision to foster per se, however, our foster found us.
On the first Saturday after Christmas, I just returned home from a trip to Baltimore and was taking the pugs out for a short walk before we went to grab some dinner. While the pugs were smelling around on the corner, a car approached and the person inside asked if we wanted another pug - referencing the one on her lap. Confused as to why they were offering up their pug, we approached the car and found out that they had found the pug wandering the street a few days before and were unsure what to do with it. I asked if they were able to keep the pug for at least one more night and they assured me that they could. Knowing that, we immediately swapped numbers so that when I returned home I could call them and give them the contact information for Central Florida Pug Rescue who I knew would be able to help. However, after many attempts to contact them, I never spoke to those people again.
Cut to Monday morning.
I was plugging away in my office when the doorbell rang. When I approach the door, I was taken aback by a man in what looks very much like a police officer’s uniform. I quieted the pugs and then went out to speak with him. He asked if I was short a pug. I gave him a pug titled head look and said, “No, why?” He explained, that he just received a call about a pug wandering in our neighborhood and first wanted to check and make sure all ours were accounted for. This had me ever so confused as I wondered how the animal control officer even knew that I had pugs. It turned out that he lives in a neighborhood right behind us and frequently sees us walking our pugs. And after asking a few people in our subdivision he was easily able to track us down.
I let him know that all my pugs were present and accounted for and were all barking at him at the door. He explained that there was a black pug wandering about and that he was on his way to pick it up. My heart sank. Was this the same pug that I saw on Saturday? I told him the story of what happened on Saturday night and how we were trying to get the pug into rescue. He was very pleased with this and asked to take our rescue surrender form up with him so that he could get the person that was temporarily holding the dog to sign the pug over into CFPR’s care. (Through the conversation it was determined that this was not even the same person that we spoke to on Saturday. Apparently, the people that spoke to us on Saturday just released the pug back to the streets!)
The animal control officer went to retrieve the pugs and in about 5 minutes returned with an elderly, black, female pug that was clearly the pug we saw on Saturday evening. We put a leash and collar on her and scurried her off to the vet to get a quick checkup to ensure that bringing her into the house would not put Benjamin, Henry, Luna or Cupid at risk.
Here is what we found out at the vet:
- She is approximately 8 - 10 years old.
- She has an immature cataract in her left eye and a small growth on her left eyelid. In her right eye she has poor vision due to another condition.
- She has been spayed and currently weighs in at 18 pounds.
- She has no microchip.
- She is missing at least 6 teeth.
- She has pretty bad arthritis in her hips and it appears she has it in other joints as well.
- Here toenails were exceptionally long and curled under making it difficult for her to walk.
- But, she had nothing to prevent her from mingling with our crew so we promptly brought her home.
There are plenty of details to come about her first couple of days in the OBP household. With the adventure of the first week under our belt, we have taken a sigh of relief to have made it this far. We did not expect our foster to come to us, we expected to go retrieve her. Sometimes, I guess that is just how things work out. At least it saved me from having to make a decision about fostering.
PS - Holy Moly, we realize we didn’t eve tell you her name! Choosing a name was a day’s adventure in itself! I guess there really is a lot more to come.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Baby Benny in his oversized bow tie.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
This week’s flashback: Passed Out
She’s been a pretty tired girl this week too.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Guess what? Another dog bed! This one is like a bean bag chair and we normally keep it on the floor and the pugs love it!
I know, just what we need, another dog bed. If you are staging an intervention, I understand.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Happy New Year!
I would like to thank everyone who supported us through all our ups and downs and adventures in 2008! It was great getting to know all of you and I look forward to sharing 2009 with you! Here’s to another wonderful year!
