Thursday, June 19, 2008
I always love it when Benjamin, Henry & Luna smoosh together even though they have plenty of room to spread out. They act like this is the only sunny spot in the house.
With it being so hot lately, they have been doing a lot of laying around. We have been going for walks in the evenings which have been great. Last night we got about 3/4’s of a mile away from home and the sky behind us began to look a bit ominous so we turned around and contemplated on taking a shortcut back home. After some debate, we took the shortcut and made it home 7 minutes before it poured down rain. It was a fun little race against Mother Nature.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Luna’s eyes are by no means perfect, but when I look at this photo it makes me think just how far this little girl has come. I’ll never forget when she had her first Schirmer Tear test and both her eyes registered at zero, meaning she was producing absolutely no tears. Her eyes were bone dry. Now she regularly scores a 13 or 14 on the test. It isn’t perfect, and I don’t think we will ever get to perfect, but it certainly is a far cry better.
She has settled in nicely and while she has only been here for a little over 2 years I feel like she has been a part of the pack since Benjamin & Henry were pups.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Here we have little Luna standing at the pool’s edge. Looking forward to your captions in the comments.
Monday, June 16, 2008
When I sit on the lounge chair this is the view I have. I always have to sit with my knees up to my chest because the pugs never miss an opportunity to sit on the lounge chair with someone. Most of the time, Henry wiggles his way in there too, but not until my hand has fallen off from petting him. Henry likes to sit on the ground right next to my chair. From there, he knows that my hand can reach him perfectly and that I have plenty of time to pet him. He enjoys it so much and feels so relaxed he has to fight falling asleep which makes him look like this.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Cupid exploring the yard in a freedom harness.
The pugs hanging out in the new cat climber.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A few weeks ago I realized that Luna doesn’t really know her name. Her real name that is.
When we adopted her we could have easily renamed her because she had no clue that her name was Luna. Sure, she would wag her tail when you said Luna, but at that point she wagged her tail at everything. Her name seemed to fit her so we opted not to change it and figured she would learn her name along the way.
I am ashamed to admit that Luna has not had any real training. We haven’t taken much time to teach her the basics of obedience nor have we taken her to any training classes. I feel a bit bad because we have invested a lot of time in the boys’ education. When they were about 11 weeks old we took them to puppy class and after they graduated from puppy class they took a general obedience class. When they were young we worked tirelessly to get them to obey basic commands. But our training efforts weren’t because we wanted to have the most obedient pugs in the neighborhood, it was just to keep them from bouncing off the walls. We had to teach Benjamin to sit before we would feed him because otherwise he would just jump straight up and down and try to get the food bowl out of our hands. It really doesn’t matter to me if he is sitting or standing when I feed him, just as long as he isn’t scratching my legs and making me spill his food. We had to train the boys because they needed the rules to act right. Luna, on the other hand, was calm and didn’t act like a wild woman so we never felt the same urgency to train her. Luna didn’t need training, she needed love and proper care. Our main focus with Luna was taking care of her eyes and skin and making her feel secure in her new home. When we first adopted her she literally would fall asleep standing up. It took awhile before she would be comfortable enough to sprawl out and really snooze.
With our emphasis on TLC, we never really took time to teach Luna her name. Sure we called her Luna all the time, but being the nickname type people we are we soon started to call her Looney. And since she is such a precious girl we couldn’t resist saying it in a nice high pitch squeak each time we called her. Say, “Luna”, or even “Looney” for that matter, and you won’t get much of a response from the little girl, but say “Looney” in the special high pitch voice and you will have her attention immediately. It isn’t what you say, its how you say it.
Even more embarrassing is that Luna responds very well to “Girl”. Before we adopted her we frequently referred to Benjamin and Henry as “boys”. If you wanted them to come all you needed was a simple “here boys” and you had two pugs sitting at your feet. It was a simple way to address both of them. Somehow that conveyed into calling Luna “girl”. If she walked over to me I would always say, “hey girl!” And if I wanted her to come I would say, “Come, girl.” It stuck with her.
The funny thing is that the only pug that really knows Luna by her real name is Henry. Henry is very smart and knows everyone’s name. When you say Luna he knows exactly who you are referring to.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
It’s not officially summer yet, but as far as the pugs are concerned summer is here in full force. It’s been so hot that Henry has been begging for ice cubes again whenever I take a sip of water and if it gets any hotter we might have to consider getting some blocks of ice for the pugs to lick. Walks are pretty much restricted to early morning hours before work, which I always have a very hard time working in, or to the evenings at dusk or on really hot days after it is dark. The pugs don’t seem to mind the change in their walk schedule as much as they mind the mixup in their sunning time. Henry loves to lay in the yard and bask in the sun and Luna and Benny love to lay on the lounge chairs around the pool. All three of them have found that it is just too hot for that!
I have been on door patrol a lot lately because the pugs haven’t fully accepted that it is summer. The pugs go out, sit outside for not even a minute and then they come back in. They cool off in the air conditioned house and then they want to go back out again. Its like they haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that they need to find their old favorite indoor sleeping spots from last summer.
We could also use some rain. There has been rain all around us, but it just keeps missing us. Yesterday, it thundered and looked like it was going to pour down rain any minute, but we never got more than a sprinkle. Luna might have to put back on her rain coat 
What’s the weather like where you are?
