We went to the bookstore this weekend and no trip to the bookstore would be complete without a stop in the Pet section. As we made our way over, I noticed a clearance table and I saw the book Test Your Dog The Dog IQ Test. I had seen this book before and flipped through it quickly, but now that it was "bargain priced" I couldn't resist getting it and taking the quiz for each one of the pugs.
When I got home, I flipped to the first question and it reads, "Does your dog recognize the signs that indicate you are preparing his or her food?" My choices were Always, Sometimes or Never. However, I didn't feel those answers were emphatic enough. Perhaps a YES with five exclamation points would be a better choice. Or "They can read my mind and know when I am going to feed them before I even make a move towards the kitchen" would be more accurate.
The second question is "Does your dog have different reactions to different foods (e.g. is especially eager for a piece of salami vs. the same old dry dog food)? Hello! Can you say PUGKIN BREAD!
At this point, I slammed the book closed, looked at the pugs and told them that if we stop at question number two all four of you are geniuses!
Please note that this is not an endorsement for Nutro dog food. It was just us taking advantage of a photo-op with Luna. As you know, we feed the pugs a homemade diet and I am not about to throw my hat in the ring and start recommending dog food.
I have been trying for awhile to get a few shots of the pugs catching treats that are tossed to them. To make it possible we had to change from Cheerios to a larger treat that would show up a bit better in mid air. So we opted for blueberry flavored dog biscuits. Something a bit bigger would have worked even better, but if you look close you can see the treats flying through the air.
The pictures of the treats the boys caught were OK, but the interesting shots were their near misses. First up is Benjamin taking one on the chin.
The toss is up. Benjamin is intently focused on the treat which is the light brown spot highlighted by the green tree background and just above the white bar.
But something went awry. Did Luna's wiggling tail cause Benny to take his eye of the treat? It doesn't much matter, the treat bounces of Benny's chin. You can see the treat as it falls to the ground.
The treat takes a couple of bounces and ends up between Luna's hind legs. Watch out little girl you are about to be up ended.
Next up is Henry and his miss was quite amusing.
The toss is good and it looks like Henry is in a good position to make the catch.
But wait, what happened! The treat bounces out of Henry's mouth at the last minute and you can see it falling to the ground.
Nooooo! Come here tasty treat!
And then the worst possible thing that could happen happens. The treat rolls into the pool. Not knowing what to do the pugs start pacing around the edge of the pool devastated that their treat has met a soggy demise.
Ann was gracious enough to bake a whole bag of pugkin bread pupcakes for the pugs (Ann's recipe). The pugs just loved that the pupcakes were their very own serving!
If you are wondering why Sol's napkin is further back than Benjamin, Henry & Luna's that's because two seconds earlier she pulled this stunt.
I recorded Sol last night as I was feeding the pugs and I think I am going to video tape all of the pug feedings from now on. At least the early morning feedings. With the camera rolling, it was like Sol knew that a video of her acting all crazy was going to end up on the Internet and so she decided to be on her best behavior. She did break down a bit in the middle, but let me tell you, those barks are nothing like what she normally does. She is usually way more passionate and the noises she makes in no way resemble barking.
While this isn’t her oscar performance, you still might want to check the sound if you are watching this while at work. Any co-worker within a 300 yard radius is going to be able to hear the squeals on this video.
This post may be a little on the dramatic side, but that is because I mapped it out in my head in the two hours I laid awake during the wee hours of Saturday morning because my heart was still beating out of my chest.
Saturday morning, around 4am I was sleeping soundly when I was suddenly awoken by a blood curdling scream. It startled me so bad that I actually jumped out of bed. As I was standing bleary eyed next to the bed, I was trying to process what I heard. In what seemed like forever, but really only amounted to a second in time, I thought about the cat. Was it her? Did she get in some sort of fight through the screen with a wild animal? But, the noise didn’t sound like a cat sound. It sounded like a human scream, so my next logical conclusion in my sleepy state was that someone had broken into the house and was in the process of killing us. Clearly, that could be the only other possible option for what I heard.
But then, I heard the screech again. I scanned the bed and noticed that the pugs were gone and while I was processing that thought, I heard the screech again and then I heard a sound I was all to familiar with. It was the sound of a metal bowl clanking against the glass top of the stove.
At that point, I realized that the screaming was in fact Sol, and that the problem was not that the pugs were under attack from some intruder, but that it was taking a bit too long for Sol’s breakfast to be served.
See, Sol gets very excited when it is time to eat and she likes to voice her excitement. However, she can’t hear. So rather then letting us know how happy she is to eat at a reasonable level, she screeches at the top of her lungs. Since she doesn’t hear anything, she just assumes that she isn’t making any noise and let me tell you that is not the case. That girl has some lungs on her.
After realizing what was going on, I plopped back in bed and thought to myself, “Looks like I just figured out what I am going to write about on Monday.”
A few minutes later Sol was finished her breakfast and she came back to bed. She curled up in the crook of my arm and within a few minutes was sound asleep completely unaware that she nearly gave her mother a heart attack just a few minutes earlier.
While Sol was sleeping soundly, I, on the other hand, was wide awake at this point. It took me about 2 hours to finally fall back asleep and shortly after I did wouldn’t you know the alarm went off.
It might sound odd, but one of the best ways for me to unwind after a hectic day is to toss Cheerios to the pugs. When I first started this, the pugs were kinda like the Bad News Bears. Luna can’t see, so she is pretty much out, Sol has had part of her jaw removed and the boys, well, they were surprisingly bad. Horrible actually.
So when we first started, the pugs were so funny that I would laugh so hard my stomach would hurt. The funniest thing to me was Benny. He pretty much missed every Cheerio thrown at him. So they would bounce off his mouth or his forehead and he would chase after them and eat them. Well, when he started to catch them, he would catch it and then look for one on the floor. It was like he didn’t realize that he caught it.
We would play a little bit each day and I would toss Cheerios to the pugs and hand one to each of the girls. Slowly, the boys got better. Henry progressed much faster than Ben, but now they are both to the point where they catch almost every Cheerio thrown their way.
So here is an exceptionally long, unedited video that has plenty of my annoying commentary of the pugs catching Cheerios. It gets a little boring after a while, but be sure to tune in around 3:40. At that point, I tried to see if Sol could catch a few Cheerios and what do you know, she did great! She missed the first one, but nailed the rest after that. This was the first time I had tried tossing one to Sol and you’ll be able to tell by me excitement in the video just how proud I am of her. Even with part of her jaw removed she can still do it!
