BLOWING BUBBLES FOR BOUNTY

Gus here.  I never get enough to eat.  No matter that my Guardian tells me my weight is perfect and the food I eat is very good for me.  I'm still always hungry.  So I'm trying something to encourage Guardian to feed me more often.  I blow bubbles for bounty.  You know...bounty...like lots...lots of food...bounty of food.  Whatever.  I speak pug, not English, so sometimes you gotta interpret.

So here I am staring down my food bowl.  I bubble sometimes, and I know Guardian sometimes laughs and tells me my bubbles are funny.  I decided to give her the biggest bubble ever, especially if it meant I'd get more food.

Look at this sucker....it's bigger than my nose!!!

But did it get me more food???

So, where's my bowl?  Where's my bounty??? 

Disappointed again :(

OUR VERY OWN PRIVATE PARK

We've all been bummed out by this latest hot, hot, hot weather.  Guardian says that three days in a row of 90+ degrees = heat wave. I don't know about that. Except for knowing how much is in my food bowl, I don't bother with numbers. All I know is that Guardian wouldn't let us out on the deck AT ALL.

Even she was fed up with staying indoors except for our short potty breaks.  We went down on the very bottom floor of our house, and that's when she had a surprise for us.  OUR VERY OWN PRIVATE PARK!  No car, no crate, either, needed to get to it.

 Here it is....trees and shade and grass. OUTSIDE. Even in the heat! Only...no path like our usual parks.   I was cautious.  Gus, the goofball, will go anywhere, and he was right there in line, doing his usual velcro pug stuff, but I hung back.  


 Jazz: What's that wheely thing?
Guardian: It's a Beach Buggy.
Jazz: Where's the beach?  I'm not going anywhere. You're just trying to trick me.
Guardian:  [Shrugging]

Guardian took a few things outside plus the wheely, then added Gus. But not me!

They left me behind---imagine that!!  I was frantic!   Finally, after what seemed like two lifetimes, Guardian checked up on me.  This time I was NOT gonna be ignored.

Maybe if I ignore her, she'll go away.

 

I told Gus what I thought about being left behind.  I knew better than to scold Guardian if I wanted to stay with them.

I was gonna show Gus I meant business, so I started to hump him.

Get away from me, Jazz!

I told Jazz all right! I'm duh man dog!

I happened to look over my shoulder then.  What is that?

That looks an awful lot like our deck!  What's it doing in our very own private park?

HEE HEEE HEEEE...and she thinks she's SO smart.  I knew where we were all along!

WACKY WEATHER

Well, once again we've gone from spring into summer, with clouds and rain in-between. As you probably know, pugs don't do well in direct sun, especially black pugs. Today the numbers didn't look all that bad--like 82 or something says Guardian, but we just walked half-way around our circle road, and I was pant, pant, panting. Gus was too busy listening to the lawn mowers and keeping his eyes on the mail truck.  He likes trucks. One day Guardian went to get the mail and next thing she knew, Gus had jumped into the truck, landing on the mail carrier's lap!  He's been wanting to do that again ever since.  But the mail carrier wants no repeat jumping events like that!

Something about the bright sun and no clouds just makes everything hotter.
 It was cool just to slum in the shade.

Gus was just so happy slumming that he wanted his back to enjoy the cool grass, too.

So the next day we figured it would be the same...but whenever Guardian won't let us on the deck to chew on the bully sticks, we know the weather is wacky.  She showed us the temperature number dial.  Guess you can see why we weren't allowed out on the deck or on the grass that day.

We hoped we go out on the deck the next day.  Well, here's the dial again---no sun, some rain, lots of wind and a lower number:

Too cool and wet.  No deck---again! 

What's wrong with that dial, anyway?

 Guardian went on the big Source of Info on the Internet and found about something she said was called "Arctic Amplification." 

Jazz:  Wha?!
Guardian:   Well the ice in the top of the world that pushes hot sun rays back into space has melted.  Then there's more ocean that can't send those rays back, so it heats up.  That messes with the West to East river of winds that create weather changes.  That river of wind looks like a big roller coaster.

 

This windy roller coaster now goes slower, but the high parts are higher and low parts lower and wider.  That's why we get stuck in days and days of all too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry weather. Then, all of a sudden it changes to something totally the opposite.

Jazz: I have no idea what you just said.  Can we go back on the deck now?

Jazz: Weather seems just fine, Guardian.

WHAC-A-MOLE WELLNESS

Gus has Stephen King eyes (no pupils, just weird, scary dark eyes ) gets 3 different eye meds, eats special food without rice or fish or beets, and gets shots because he's allergic to about every grass, fungus, tree and plant there is. Then he got all this white stuff that started to show up all over his back and haunches.  Like someone had taken a sea salt shaker and sprinkled it on him.
But what got Guardian really upset was that Gus started to lose patches of his fur. Then he got some bald spots and his once shiny black coat got all dull and ugly. 

Now, therapy dogs just can't have that problem, so off to the vet he went.
Gus told me that it took Guardian and the other lady who works with the vet to put wrestling holds on him to keep him from jumping off that slippery table. He escaped a couple of times, then Guardian pulled out the big guns....uh....smelly treats.  Gus has to be really, really sick not to eat, and when that stuff waved in front of his nose, well, next thing he knew, he was out of the wrestling hold and done with the vet.  Guardian said the vet scraped Gus's skin and sent it off somewhere.

Jazz: ALL his skin?
GUARDIAN: No, silly, just a tiny bit of it.

When it came back, it was not good. Some kind of bug that usually attacks human throats was now attacking Gus, but far from his throat. What's a bug that attacks human throats doing on a pug's skin???!! Has some infected human been sucking on your skin,Gus? 

And it meant that it needed special medication AGAIN. 

And new shampoo.

Guardian: Figuring out how to keep Gus healthy is like playing Whac-A-Mole.

Jazz: Whack a WHAT?
Guardian: Oh some kind of game...hard to explain. But we just get one Gus ailment fixed and another pops up. We don't know his background, 'cuz he was adopted.  But he sure is a walking ad AGAINST puppy mill breeding, since that's where he probably came from.



Then she changed some of his food again....he gets real rabbit patties instead of canned food. (She sometimes sneaks a piece of the bunny to me! YUM!)  Then she gave us both some white glop to eat for our fur.

But, you know what? Gus is better! No more bare patches. His fur is shiny again thanks to all that special care. Much less sea salt sprinkles. He told me he feels a LOT better now, too.

So moles BE WARNED!!!! That whacker is ready to knock you down if you ever show your ugly mug again!  
 

A HUNGRY PLEA FROM THE SNORTY PUGS

Gus and I have both been listening to kids read lately.  I usually go to the far-away library.

That's a name tag on my back. Ewww...I'm so grey!

Gus: I go to the short trip library.

Love those head scratches!

 Jazz:  I get to see more kids in a bigger room.
Gus: I get to spend less time in the crate.
Jazz:  I got to go to the library's luncheon for volunteers.
Gus:  You did!? 
Jazz: Yeah, it was awesomely BIG.  It was in the same room that the kids read to me...only it smelled a lot better. But only grown up people, no kids.  And a few other (really huge) therapy dogs.
Gus:  So what did you get to eat?
Jazz: Wouldn't you like to know?
Gus: Uhhhhm...I just asked you to tell me.
 Jazz:  Wellllllllll....actually Guardian wouldn't let me eat her lunch food.
Gus: She's holding out on us.  At the pug meetup, a bunch of pugs told me they get people food a LOT.

She gives you her human food?!?

Jazz:  Hmmmmm...you always look hungrier than I do.  And you are always velcroed to Guardian.  Ya think you can look like you are definitely starving next time she's eating a meal?
Gus: I always look like I'm starving, because I am. 
Jazz: Yeah, and we all know how well that works...Hey, let's put it to the pug world to tell us how to get Guardian to give us her human food!
Gus: OK!

So, readers...what do you do to get your human to give you his/her food????

Please help us...you see here what disgusting things we have to eat. Does this look like something you would eat, humans? I didn't think so. Have pity on us pugs!

NICE BACON LADY

Finally! Something interesting going on here!

We met this nice lady with a big black, sort of noisy round tunnel thing coming out of her face (a lot of the time--she had regular eyes, nose, mouth stuff, too). 

She had hands that were filled with treats--like ALL the time.  At first I didn't like the weird noise that kept happening, but they seemed to bring on the treats, so I figured that the tunnel thing was pretty much OK.

We got to go to the park where we always walk with Oscar and Otis.  Only they didn't show up.  We had the nice lady & Guardian all to ourselves.  I'm the most important pug, so I got to go first.  She made these strange noises sometimes, too, which I had to twist and tilt my head to make any sense of them.  Treats kept coming, so I kept paying attention to her.  She seemed happy with how I was acting, so I kept it up until I got really tired.

She even took me off the leash so I could run free!  That never happened before in the park.  It sort of woke me up, too.

Gus here:  I was wondering when I'd be getting the nice lady's treats.  We didn't stay in the flowers where she had put Jazz.  That was fine with me.  I got to do studly things on a bench.  Next thing I hear is the word "supermodel," and lots more treats.  This was getting to be fun. I also got treats for just peering out of my car crate.  I got to run free, too.

Jazz: By the time we got home, I was really ready for a nap.  Gus looked droopy, too.  The nice lady and Guardian kept yacking and yacking, which is sort of equal to a sleeping pill to me, so long as I don't miss out on any more treats.

After the nice lady with the noisy black tunnel coming out of her face left, Guardian opened the gifts that the nice lady had brought for US!

There was a pink elephant toy that not only squeaked, but made some of of plastic bag noise.  I like to attack plastic bags (Guardian always pulls it away from me for some lame reason), but not with this toy!  We both had a go at it, trying our best to destroy it.

But the most amazing gifts were something to do with what Guardian called "bacon."    There was this little bottle that smelled delicious when she opened it.  Gus and I sort of licked it, then wanted to grab it.  OMIGOSH...we'd never tasted anything like it!  We wanted to put it in our mouths and run away with it.  Guardian just jerked it up and gave us her evil eye look.  When we did things she liked, like sitting or obeying some other command, out came the little bottle.  

 Then the last, but not least gift was something Guardian said she had to cook.  She plopped it into the ultra fast cooker thing over the stove and it filled the house with this unbelievable mixtures of smells.  It also made sort of popping noises.  Guardian said it had to cool down first--then she gave it to us. It was crunchy and tasted like--BACON!  

The nice lady then became The Nice BACON Lady. 

Thank you, Nice BACON Lady, for coming to visit, for telling us we were Supermodels (well, in my case, since I have to be different--a Saucy Model), and for bringing us our first BACON!!  

Then we found out she was The Daily Puglet's human.

Puglet--we are ONE with the BACON!

M.I.N.A (Missing In Non-Action)

We've been hibernating through this really cold and windy "spring."  We don't get long walks and we don't go to too many interesting places.  So...that's why we've been so silent here.  In case you've forgotten what we look like....

And here's another one...you can see how excited we are (NOT!)

We hope to have some really interesting things to tell you after next week.  Guardian said we're supposed to have a special visitor on Thursday.  But unless it involves food, playing with our 'Cuz balls, food, gentle people who stroke us and food, we don't really care.

I know this is really boring to read...and we're only showing you how it's been for us the past umpteen days.

If you have any interesting stories to tell, we'd love to hear them.  We're fresh out of our own.  Maybe we can borrow yours?