Tuesday, March 31, 2009
This photo made me laugh when I saw it flash by as I was pulling photos from the camera. I don’t like to bias the captions by adding my own two cents when posting a Caption This photo, but I can’t help myself with this one. My first thought when I saw this picture was, “‘Cuz this is Thriller, Thriller nights…”
Looking forward to your captions in the comments.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The pugs always wake up at an obscene hour for breakfast. And by pugs I mean Benjamin. Benny usually starts sometime between 5am and 6am jumping around wanting to eat. I usually hold him off until it is time to get up for work, but on the weekends this doesn’t really work too well. So I get up at his normal feeding time, take them out in the yard to go potty, give them their breakfast and then sneak back to bed for a few more hours of sleep.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to tags jingling, glanced at the clock and saw that it said 5:12am. My immediate thought was 5am on a Sunday, Benny, you got to be kidding me! So I grumbled something to him to let him know that he is crazy and that he needed to go back to bed. But my grumbling was not heeded and I heard a pug dancing around not taking no for an answer. I pried my eyes open to see what was going on and I saw little Luna staring back at me. While Luna is always quick to join in on Benny’s breakfast crusade, she is never the one to start it.
Thinking that Luna might just need to go potty, I got up and took her to the yard. Benny and Henry joined us and I scooped up Sol so that I only needed to make one trip to the yard in my stupor. Luna wasn’t in much of a hurry to go potty, so I wasn’t sure why she was dancing around the bed so early. As we were coming back into the house, all the pugs made a mad dash for the kitchen and while it went against my principles to feed them so early in the morning I did it anyway because I certainly didn’t want to get up to do it about an hour later. After the pugs ate, we all crawled back into bed and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard a clap a thunder and then the sound of rain beating on the roof. It was pouring. At that point, I remembered they were calling for pretty bad thunder storms to move through the area in the early morning hours. I laid in bed listening to the rain and the thunder. Luna snuggled up beside me and was quite pleased with herself. By getting up when she did she saved her paws from getting wet!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Benjamin sporting his Birthday Boy Bandana. Why the serious look? He heard someone in the kitchen. Could they be making him a special birthday treat?
Saturday, March 28, 2009
This week’s flashback: Not Guilty
Just one of Baby Benny’s infamous antics.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Today, Baby Benny turns 7 years old! I can hardly believe it. It seems like only yesterday I was bringing that little guy home. Technically, Benjamin is my first pug. We picked him up on a Friday afternoon and he was the only pug in the house until Saturday afternoon when we brought home Henry. The 24 hours that Benny was the sole pug of the house gave him the distinction of being the first pug to steal my heart.
Before we took Benny home, we made a stop at Aunt Laurie’s office so the two could meet. Benjamin was charming as always, but he also had a potty accident while he was there. And that little incident was foreshadowing for what was to come with Benjamin. I don’t think I will ever meet a dog that will ever have as many potty accidents as Benny had in the first year of his life. He was forever going to the bathroom in the house and there was a point, about 6 months after Henry was potty trained, that I thought he would just never learn. We had ruled everything out. There were no medical reasons hindering him or any other special circumstances. It was just him. Around the time I was contemplating pitching a tent in front of the house because one of us was always taking Benny out to go potty, the stars aligned and something clicked with Benny and he was suddenly potty trained. He went from having accidents every day to having no accidents ever. There was no occasional slip up, he just got it and he became a pro at going potty outside. It has been years since he has had an accident in the house.
Benjamin’s learning style is similar to flipping a switch from off to on. Benny can be completely inept at doing something one day and the next day he will have confidently mastered that very same skill. When the boys were about 6 months old, we enrolled them in a basic obedience class. They were known by the instructor as the wiggle butts and we had the honor of sitting next to two lab puppies who were the smartest and quickest learners in the class. I would always sit with Benny closest to the labs hoping that Benjamin would pickup some of their savvy via osmosis because in the early weeks of the class Benjamin was in danger of flunking.
One of our first assignments was the “sit” command. We learned the techniques on how to teach the command in class and then we were told to practice, practice, practice at home. Henry had the sit command mastered a day or two after class and that was good because that gave us plenty of time to focus on Benny because it took him at least a few more weeks before he knew how to sit on command. We would do about 4, 5 minute training sessions a day and each time no progress was made.
I will never forget the day we were visiting G-Ma & G-Pa and we were all sitting around outside. I had a bag full of liver treats that had been broken into tiny pieces and I was going to show G-Ma how well Henry knew the sit command and how Benny just wasn’t getting it. The pugs didn’t disappoint at first. Henry sat on command each and every time he was asked and Benny, well, he just stood there wiggling his butt. G-Ma & G-Pa thought that was just the funniest thing. Then, I told Benny another time to sit and to everyone’s surprise he did! I pretty much gave him all the treats that were left and everyone was giving him “good boys” and lots of love. From that point forward, he never missed a sit. It was like a switch went off in his head. And for Benny it has been like that with everything.
Reflecting back over the last 7 years I can’t help but smile as all of the Baby Benny memories fill my head. He may have caused us a lot of grief with all the potty accidents as a puppy, but he has more than made up for it over the years will all the times he has brought a smile to our face or turned around a crappy day by doing something silly.
Happy Birthday, Baby Benny!
A few of my favorite Baby Benny moments shared on the blog:
Thursday, March 26, 2009
I love our walks with the pugs in the evenings. They are usually a great way to unwind from a hectic day. The last few nights, however, I have felt like I am in the middle of the old school video game Paperboy. There have been other dogs off leash, kids on bikes, bees and all kinds of other obstacles thrown our way. If only I had a sack of newspapers with me so that I could throw one at them and get them to pause for a few seconds so that we can make our way down the street.
While I never encountered this type of hinderance in Paperboy, one of my biggest pet peeves when out walking the dogs is when someone walking another dog stops to talk to us and doesn’t know the leash dance. When dogs meet, they sniff each other and they inevitably make their way to the other’s rear end to really get to know each other. They circle and smell, circle and smell and during that process the leashes will inevitable get tangled. When this happens, I try to keep up with the dogs and get the leashes untangled. It is really great when the other person is of the same mindset and can help keep the leashes straight so that our dogs don’t become conjoined twins. It really irks me when the other person just stands there while the five dogs get their leashes all in an knot (my four and their one). Some are oblivious, but there is one person that I encounter fairly regularly that just laughs and says, “Oh, look they are getting all tangled up!” What a very keen observation!
So while that person drones on and on I just keep untangling the leashes and thinking to myself that it is quite obvious that this person has never owned more than one dog at a time.
And for this very reason, I am glad that we move the clocks ahead a few weeks back. When it was getting dark earlier, we would walk the dogs before dinner and now since we aren’t in a mad race with the sun, we can walk the dogs after dinner. Trust me, you don’t want to have your dogs leash get all tangled with mine when I’m hungry. I think everyone will agree that walks after dinner are much, much nicer.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Last week Darci & Abbey the pug wrote in wondering about chewing. Abbey loves to chew and Darci was wondering if all pugs are avid chewers. Three out of the four of my gang love to chew. How about your pugs? Do they like to chew and if so what is their favorite type of bone.
Looking forward to hearing all about the chewing habits of the pugs out there in OBP land 
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