Nom de Plume

It’s a long story and I don’t want to jinx it. In any case, here’s a very blurry video of the two puglets who are, uh, enthusiastic for one another.

Pug Love

“What was that stuff in the big tupperware container?” Steve asked a few days ago.

“Harry’s dog food,” I said. “The stuff I made.”

There was a pause.

“Well, it didn’t taste very good.”

In case you missed it, I’ve crossed over from being a pug enthusiast to being a pug maniac and have started making Harry’s food. He needs supplements, though, and a friend said that her holistic vet has a recipe online. So there I was, thinking what a freak I’ve become, searching for the site.

And then I came across this.

For the link-wary among you, let me quote:

Many of you are wondering if a vegetarian or vegan diet might be appropriate for your animal friends. Fortunately, your dogs can be vegetarians!

All of a sudden, I felt a lot more normal.

The thing you have to understand about Harry is that if it’s not one thing, it’s another. We seem to lurch from condition to condition. The moment one seems to be resolved, poof! there’s another. Over the summer, he poked the middle of his eyeball. Then, in the fall, he developed monstrous lip warts. In early winter, his eyeball puffed up again, and now his tummy is completely bald and the vet said he probably has food allergies.

Food allergies. See what I mean?

The big condition, of course, is the hydrocephalus. I should mention that I have completely weaned him off the prednisone, and he’s like his puppy self again — feisty and energetic. He is no longer a little stoned lump on a log. Plus, many people have commented on his new svelte figure.

Which is even more svelte because his hair is thinning.

So this morning, I hopped online to see about hypoallergenic dog food. Single source protein and carbs, all the sites say. Then, I started reading all the ingredients of dog food. All I can say is that it’s frightening. I had never really thought about it before. I mean, we feed cows corn to get rid of surplus grain and then put them on meds to help them stomach food they shouldn’t be eating in the first place. We have mad cow disease because we were feeding rendered sheep to cattle. The list goes on and on. And it extends to our furry (or not so furry as the case may be) little critters. Those innocent little squares of doggie kibble are just plain scary.

And thus begins my descent into freaky pug ownership: I am cooking for the dog now.

He’s having turkey, potatoes, and carrots for dinner.

Pug: $800
Getting lip warts removed from pug: $127.32
Giving removed lip warts to boyfriend as birthday gift: Priceless

“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously. Steve was surfing the Web, with Harry on his lap. He never puts Harry on his lap. Usually, he never even touches him — especially now that Harry has two barnacle-like monstrosities on his lower lip. We’ve taken to calling him Barnacle Harry (after Davy Jones’ crew in the last pirates movie, which, by the way, could have ended about five hours sooner than it did).

“We’re surfing pug porn,” he replied. “Pug porn and pug personals.”

I laughed.

“No, seriously,” Steve insisted. “He can’t get a date now with his lip warts.”

“Any luck? Pugs with g-strings?”

“Yeah, they’re hot little numbers too. G-strings, bows in their hair. But none of them will go out with him. They’re afraid the warts are contagious.”

Sigh.

I can’t deal with the warts, partly because they’re ugly as sin. Mostly, though, it’s because when Harry partakes of his fave kitty poop buffet, the result is beyond disgusting. I took him in to the vet last week. Dr. Heino took one look and said, “Wow, I’ve never seen warts that big.” The problem is, Harry has so much wrong with him that the risk of anesthesia is much higher with a normal dog. Dr. Heino posited that the prednisone might be interfering with the body’s immune response. So now we’re trying to cut down his medication — a good thing anyway as it will eventually kill him — and hoping that might work. So we’re on day 6 of a half-dose and he’s doing well.

But the warts aren’t going anywhere. If anything, they get bigger day by day. Today, I took a picture in to be framed. My framer, Terry, told me that duct tape is supposed to work. Ran home, did a quick google, and lo and behold! They don’t know why, they don’t know how, but amazingly enough it works. I nearly wept in gratitude.

That was, of course, before I tried to stick duct tape to Harry’s rather moist lower lip. So for the meanwhile, we are stuck with this:

My hardworking man needs a little extra scrubbaliciousness sometimes. As for me, I needed a hard oil to replace the palm oil that’s missing in my new soapmaking life — Aha! Crisco! (Which, by the way, I have never bought in my life. I felt so … Betty Crocker.)

Started with an 8 lb soap base I found online. Then I wanted to use castor oil, which I had read makes super big bubbles. I figured Steve needed super big bubbles. So:

2 oz castor oil
24 oz oo
24 oz coil
36 oz Crisco
11.75 lye 32 oz water

I was going to do a peppermint tea tree thing, but I couldn’t find my big bottle of tea tree oil, and I only had half an oz of peppermint left. This is where things started to get interesting. Remember, the point of this is detoxification. Isn’t green tea detoxifying? So they say — and thus I infused the oo with a quarter of a cup of gunpower green tea. For scent, I decided to do manly odds and ends, which consisted of:

1.5 tsp patchouli
2.5 cedardwood
2 petitgrain

It was a lovely combo, even though generally I despise patchouli.

At trace, I added the oils and 8 tb of sea clay — one for each pound. I had bought the clay for masks, but it’s so detoxifying that my skin screams its way into the next room whenever it sees that evil little baggie.

And now I know: Too little eo, way too much clay. It doesn’t smell like much of anything. Still, it’s a cool-looking bar. I need a new name though. The Detox Ox?

*** Update.
It’s way too drying for my skin, though troubled teenagers might like it a lot. So I’m using it for pet soap.

Pug Sudz
Harry may be a little dog–but there’s nothing small about his stench: Dog slobber. Mud. Or his favorite, the kitty poop buffet (don’t ask). Still, no matter what disgusting smells he’s rolling around in, Pug Sudz makes him sweet-smelling and cuddly again. Green clay pulls out the yeechh even as olive oil protects his delicate pugly skin. Give it a whirl on your own furry stinkbomb. You’ll love him a lot more.

Yesterday around 2, I noticed that Harry’s left eye was completely clouded over. I rushed him to the vet. It was hot, and Harry was panting in the passenger seat, even with the AC running full blast. The vet took one look and said that it was very serious — swollen, infected, and with a puncture right in the center — and that I needed to go to the Pet Eye Clinic. They very kindly called the clinic for me, who said they could squeeze me in between appointments. There was construction blocking the ramp to I-5, and we had to battle downtown traffic to get on the freeway. Then there was the beginning of rush hour traffic. It was hot. I was panicked, imagining that he would lose the eye.

Finally, I got to the clinic. It was peaceful; there was no one in the waiting room in front of me and we only waited about 10 minutes. The vet took one look and was incredibly reassuring. Pugs do this all the time and it was lucky that I brought him in as soon as I saw it.

The eye is very infected. I have drops to give him — every hour last night, twice in the night, every two hours today, and every four hours until his appointment next Thursday. We are still worried because he only has 20% of the cornea left (very aggressive bacteria), and the possibility remains that the eye could rupture. If that happens, there’s surgery to repair it. Modern medicine is truly amazing.

Wish us luck.

A little while ago, I got an e-mail from Alison Pace announcing the publication of her new book. As she was very nice about removing me from her mailing list and because I thoroughly enjoyed her chicklit novel If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend, I went out and got a copy. Oh yeah, and the title, Pug Hill, may have had something to do with it too.

Hope has lots of hang-ups, a secret crush, and a deadly fear of speaking in public. When her parents ask her to speak at their 40th wedding anniversary, she runs out to enroll herself in a public speaking course. Luckily, there’s the one thing that always calms her down: watching all the pugs cavort at, you guessed it, Pug Hill, a little corner of Central Park.

So Hope goes through the public speaking course, watches pugs, makes a whole bunch of self-discoveries, including that she doesn’t really have any romantic interest in the object of her crush, rediscovers that her first real love (first mentioned about three-quarters of the way through the book) is really still her only love, and then meets up with him on the beach at the end. In other words, the plot kind of limps along on a bunch of half-baked premises.

And it’s a shame because Pace really does write well. There is a glimmer of a more serious novel in Pug Hill, but it gets lost in the chick lit formula.

Harry is fat.

I’d like to blame it on the prednisone — and yes, that contributes — but really it’s because he has more bones, pig ears and treats than he can handle. I figure at this point, we’re not worried about cholesterol, the long-term effects of obesity, or even of mobility. (On the mobility front, he’s losing muscle in his hind legs.) Still, it’s gotten to the point that random kids point to him and say, “Mommy, that dog is fat.”

The thing is that I am feeling decidedly porky right now too — and that leads me to my worst fear. You know how dogs and their owners often look alike? I am terrified that I’m going to wake up one morning and look exactly like a pug.

A fat one.

Prednisone is a steroid, so it should come as no surprise that Harry has been much more pugnacious of late. He barks at everything now: Steve, squirrels, other dogs barking. He even barks at nothing. We’ll be in the living room and all of a sudden he’ll start looking at some blank spot and barking his silly little head off. Perhaps we have ghosts that only he can see?

Really, he’s doing so much better. He has a lot of energy, and that makes me happy. Still, I can’t help but wonder how much of this is the side effect from the medication. In a way, he doesn’t even seem like himself. It’s not that he isn’t his loving little self (he is), but he is so much more aggressive than he’s ever been before. It isn’t bad, just different. (And of course, Harry’s aggressive is most dogs’ mellow.)