This past weekend, NYC’s heatwave broke and the temps finally sank below the pug-melting range. To celebrate, Sid, Jenn, and I headed to Prospect Park for the morning off-leash hours.

After a bit of strolling (Jenn and I) and sniffing (Sid), we ran into Sid’s buddy, Eddie (not to be confused with Sid’s OTHER pug pal named Eddie who lives in San Francisco).

“I’m Eddie. From Brooklyn. What’s a San Francisco?”

Once Sid and Eddie got together, it became “Dude Time”. There was no Lola, no Miss Timothy Buttons, no LADY-PUGS. PERIOD.

D O O O D Z Z Z ! ! !

Dude Time basically consists of sniffing various tall blades of grass and/or low branches and marking them. Based on what I’ve gleamed from Sid, Dude Time works even if you don’t have any pee left; the leg-lift motion alone is apparently enough.

The Dudes, locating the absolute BEST spot.

After Dude Time, Carrot Time logically followed (logically from a pug’s point of view). As soon as the plastic bag of carrots was revealed, Sid hit the deck into “Deep Jimmy” mode.

Eddie preferred a more dignified posture (he is half-British after all).

Sid gulped down carrots left and right but Eddie was a bit more apprehensive. Compared to a bully stick, a carrot seemed a bit “blah”.

 Sid had no trouble with this arrangement and quickly scooped up Eddie’s scraps.

“You’re definitely right, Eddie, Carrots (MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH) are gross, I don’t think you should eat any of them (CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH).”

And then, smack dab in the middle of Carrot Time, the most amazing creature The Dudes had ever seen approached. They were utterly perplexed as to what sort of animal was standing before them.

“Yo! I’m Faye. Yeah, I got a big bushy mustache. SO WHAT?! You pugs gonna do anything about it?”

“Um, no, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. Have a good day!”

Hi everyone!

Today is the last day to help fill up Sid’s Treat Jar!

Thanks to your generous donations, Sid’s already recouped a significant chunk of his treat funds, but, like all pugs, when it comes to treats he can never have too many.

To contribute, please click on the Sid’s Treat Jar widget on the right-hand side of PugSlope. You can use either paypal or a credit card (a PayPal account is not required).

Here’s a recap of the “treats” that you can get in return for your contribution:

$10.00:

• A special thank-you on the blog

$25.00:

• Planet Cool Sid desktop wallpaper (designed by Sid himself) for your computer
• A special thank-you on the blog

$50.00:

• Sid Solves Your Problem – Submit a question to be included Sid’s new Planet Cool Sid advice column. He can answer questions about anything and everything! According to him, HIS INPUT IS PRICELESS.
• Planet Cool Sid desktop wallpaper
• A special thank-you on the blog

$100.00:

• A print of my painting of Sid wearing his knit aviator hat
• Plus all the stuff listed above!

$150.00:

• For those of you who are dogs: a Sid’s Picks Combo Pack featuring your very own confidence shirt and potato toy!
  Or, for those of you who are humans: your very own set of Pug Slope note cards!
• Plus all the stuff listed above!

$200.00:

• Here’s where it gets crazy, guys. A special VIP access code for the PugSlope.com Treat-bone Live-Cam, good through the end of 2012. Log in every weekday between 1pm and 2pm ET to see Sid chillin’ like a villain with his peanut-butter-filled Kong bone. It’s gonna be EPIC.
• Plus all the stuff listed above! People might think you are obsessed with Sid (like we are)!

THANK YOU again for all of your love and support and good juju throughout this whole process. Sid continues to be doing really well on the allergy shots and hasn’t had any steroids for almost 2 months now. Also none of the nasty “Carl Brigade” has returned. WOO HOO!!!

P.S. For those of you that received the “Sid Solves Your Problems” reward, please be sure to send in your problem. You can email ssyp @ pugslope.com with your problem.

Oh, why, hello there, dear friend.  Don’t you look lovely today!  Why, yes, the weather is quite temperate and delightful.  What’s that you ask?  What’s this amazingly awesome super-amazing thing I’m doing?

Oh, it’s no big deal.  I’m just CHEWIN’ ON MY SQUEAKER.

OMG GUYS – first things first – this is the last week to contribute to Sid’s Treat Fund!!!  We’re already raised a spectacular $605 towards replenishing my treat funds after my parents used all my treat money to get the wart colonies off my face and get me off steroids and get me tested for allergies and get me started on allergy shots – THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ENSURING THAT I WILL NOT GO WITHOUT TREATS!!!  YOU GUYS ARE ALL WELCOME TO VISIT PLANET COOL SID VIA ROCKET SHIP ANYTIME EVEN IF YOUR PASSPORTS AND VISAS AREN’T UP TO DATE!!! My treat jar will be up on the blog until September 1st, so tell all your friends to tell their friends and so on and so on – and remind them that if they contribute to my treat fund, they’ll get all sorts of COOL stuff.  Here’s the link to the original post with all the goodies and info:  SID’S TREAT FUND.

Now, back to this squeaker business.  HOLY MOLEY, GUYS. THIS IS GONNA BLOW YOUR MIND.

You know all your toys that you love cause they’re all fluffy and fuzzy and soft and you like to nestle with them and nurture them and care for them because you really could’a been a good pop someday if things had turned out differently but somebody decided to neuter you so you just have to deal with it, and really, honestly, every time you chew on these toys they squeak, which is awesome, but they only squeak with you squeak them, whereas if you were actually a dad and these were little mini-Sids they’d have their own independent mini-brains so they’d be squeaking whenever they want to squeak and soon they’d get older and they’d have their own hopes and dreams and ideas about how much time they want to spend with their awesome dad and they’d find their own Timothy Buttons and they’d go A WHOLE WEEK without calling but you’d be okay with it because you want them to be competent pugs with happy lives but you just wish those lives involved more time with their FATHER and, you know what, if you bark at your toys, they’re never going to bark back, and your toys aren’t going to leave you unless you leave them which you’d NEVER do and…

IF YOUR TOY GETS RIPPED YOU CAN OPEN IT UP AND THERE’S THIS AWESOME PLASTIC SQUEAKER INSIDE.  Can’t do that with a kid, that’s for sure.

Now, this squeaker needs no nurturing.  In fact, all this squeaker needs is to be repeatedly tossed into the air by your parents so you can catch it in your shark-like JAWS OF STEEL.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

Okay, I kinda whiffed that last one, but that’s more because of Dad’s throwing than my catching.

Yeah, that’s the one downside about squeaker-toss – the HUMANS have to be involved.  Which means it turns into A WHOLE PROCESS.

FIRST they make me “Leave it,” which means I can’t touch it until they say “Okay.”

GIVE ME A BREAK.

Sometimes I try to touch the squeaker anyway (treats, too, when they make me leave them), but Mom and Dad are real sticklers for stupid rules.

FIGHT THE POWER!

Then Dad counts to three (why three?  who knows) and throws the squeaker into the air.  If I’m lucky, he throws it somewhere in my general direction.  Otherwise I must compensate for his lack of throwing abilities.

SIGH

And then, once we’re all tired, I just get to lie in my bed and chew on it until my parents go out or something because heaven forbid I be trusted to not SWALLOW a giant disk of plastic that I LOVE and would do ANYTHING to protect.

SID + SQUEAKS 4EVA

(Oh, and Mom says I’m also supposed to tell you guys to make sure the little squeaker mechanism in the squeaker isn’t swallowed by any cr-cr-crazy pugs out there…she lets me chew it until the squeaker mechanism gets loose, and then she pulls that little whistle part out, and then I just get to play with the non-squeaking giant disk part, which, honestly, is the best part anyway so BLERGH TO YOU, Mom)

SQUEAK SQUEAK!!

OMG, you guys, I just did a photo-shoot for my upcoming memoir, Profiles in Flap-Flippage by Sir Siddhartha Lamont Pug, the King of Planet Cool Sid and the Only Sane Mammal Living at the Pug Slope Headquarters, who rose to Staggering Heights using only the Power of his Flippable Muzzle Flaps and Who Really Should be Eating Right Now, I mean, Really, People, Get this Pug Some Food CAN’T YOU TELL HE’S STARVING; forward by Miss Timothy Buttons.  

Sid has just informed me that today is “Baby Carrot Wednesday“.

Part of what makes this Wednesday different than any other Wednesday is that, according to Sid, we’re supposed to feed baby carrots to “the creature with the, um, flattest face” until “the whole bag is, like, TOTALLY empty“. We are then supposed to go to the grocery store and buy a SECOND bag of baby carrots. The second bag is then supposed to be “left unattended in the smallest bed in the house” or else we’ll get “like, lots of years of bad luck and stuff“.

He says this is “a totally legit holiday that EVERYONE ON PLANET EARTH does“, but I’m not exactly buying it.

Is this “Baby Carrot Wednesday” a hoax???

Well, hello there!  Wow!  Welcome, everybody, to Planet Cool Sid’s Guide to Living!  On today’s show, we’re going to talk about KONGS!

KING KONG (HAHAHA – I’M HILARIOUS!!)

We all love our Kongs, right?!  I know I do!  But, have you ever gotten a Kong toy stuffed with peanut butter and carrot bits and you spend, like, twenty minutes enjoying its yummyness but then its EMPTY and as much as you bark at it, no more yums appear inside it, so you just give up and sulk in the corner with some second-rate squeaker toy that isn’t even edible and whose lack of flavor makes you curse the universe that we live in??  Yeah, me too, my friends. Me too.

Stupid Empty Kong

Well, guess what?

That Kong that you love?  It’s actually EVIL.  Sometimes, even though your Kong looks empty, it’s actually still filled with microscopic morsels of peanut buttery goodness that it’s decided to keep for its own selfish gain.  Here’s how to make sure you get every last bit of tasty goop from your Kong nemeses.

Step 1:  Study your Kong from afar.  Get to know its shape, its color, how it spends its alone time, where it hides its secrets.

Look into its soul.

Step 2:  Use the information you’ve learned in Step 1 to weasel your way into your Kong’s circle of trust.  Remember the old adage, keep your friends close and your enemies closer?  Well, I’m not totally sure that applies to this situation, but it’s the only adage I know so let’s pretend it does.

You can trust me, Kong.  I’m on your side.

Step 3: The Interrogation.  You can probably reveal your true identity and motives at this point, as well.  That’s what they do in the Batman movies, anyway.

Where are you hiding the last of the peanut butter, Kong?  

WHERE ARE YOU HIDING THE PEANUT BUTTER!!

Step 4:  If your Kong is anything like my Kong, it probably won’t talk.  Just stick the whole Kong in your mouth for a while until it frees those last bits of peanut butter from its dungeon of evil.

NOM-NOM-YUM-NOM-NOM-OOH-THAT’TH GOOD-NOM-NOM

Nom-slurp-nom Thtep Four can take hourth, but it’th worth every thecond!

That’th it for thith week’th Planet Cool Thid’th Guide to Living Nom-nom.  I’m your hotht, Thidartha Lamont.  From all of uth here at Pug Thlope, thankth for watching, and remember, nom-nom-nom, there’th no thuch thing ath an empty Kong!  Vive le Pug!

I recently finished up another batch of pug portraits featuring Mochi, Macho, and Marshmallow, and then realized that I never posted the three portraits I did earlier this year of miss Payton.

Jenn and I got to meet Payton (and her parents) this past Christmas and we hope to meet Mochi, Macho, and Marshmallow (and their mom) at the 1000 Pugs photo shoot in NYC this fall.

Here’s the “M3” gang from New York:

Mochi (in her “Jack Sparrow” halloween costume)

Macho

Marshmallow (who is a very rare WHITE pug)

Here are the portraits I made of the incredible Payton, who crossed over the rainbow bridge in April of this year. We still miss her very much.