Last evening in Chicago the clouds were making unusual formations and changing the light in surreal ways. It looked as if there were purple mountains off in the distance. Sid thought we were back in California.

I couldn’t resist going outside to Winnemac Park to check it out, and of course I wanted to bring Sid with to try and get some images of him with such an incredible backdrop. The lighting made everything look dramatic.

There was even a sun-shower at one point. It’s always a weird experience to have rain drizzling down while the sun is shining and half the sky is still clear bright blue.

P.S. Sid and I would like to thank you for all the positive thoughts and good juju you sent us in regard to his little back tweak fiasco. He is totally back to his normal self so it must have just been a fluke thing which is a big relief for us both!

Hey guys! Sid with you today.

Sorry I’ve been away for a bit longer than usual. Life had been humming along pretty normally here at Pug Slope HQ until Saturday morning at 4am when I awoke abruptly from my sleep due to a pain in my back and neck area. It came and went suddenly. My Dad bolted up to see what was the matter and said I was just sitting on the bed frozen, like a pug statue. It was because I was afraid if I moved I might get another jolt.

He took me outside because he thought it might have been gas or something but I did my business like normal and then felt fine and plopped right back to bed.

The next day I just couldn’t get comfortable. No sharp pains or anything but I just kept sitting on the edge of my bed instead of nestling down like I usually do. I was eating fine (you know something is SERIOUSLY wrong when a pug stops eating!) and had no problems walking or anything, but I was restless. In the early evening, since I wasn’t really improving, my Dad loaded me up into the rental car and drove me to the emergency vet.

I’m sure many of you have been to a place that looked JUST LIKE THIS! I tend to get into hyper/nervous mode at the vet’s office (especially the EMERGENCY vet’s office) so I was pacing around, panting, and evading humans by scurrying under chairs. Notice the sad tail. Luckily, the humans there ended up being very nice and were gentle to me.

The vet lady checked me out and all my vitals looked ok. She adjusted my head and worked her fingers on my back to see if it caused me any discomfort, but I didn’t feel any jolts like I did at 4am, which was good. She suspected I just tweaked my back or neck somehow (Maybe it was that bad dream I had where the grocery store ran out of baby carrots!). She gave my dad a vial of some “pug happy pills” that are supposed to help me with any discomfort for the next few days.

I do feel much better today and have been able to squish into my bed like normal, so it sounds like my back is untweaking itself. I was even able to flatten out on the floor!

Please send me a little good pug juju if you can spare to make sure my back stays in its normal UNTWEAKED state. In fact let’s never mention that awful T word again and instead focus on the good T word (the one that ends with “reat”).

Sid read about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous Bed-In and now he told me he’s doing the same thing. Although instead of demanding an end to war, he’s demanding an end to freezing cold walks.

I think I’m going to join him as this is definitely one cause we can both get behind.

We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend (in bed perhaps).

After all the vet visits earlier this month (including a yearly check-up, rabies shot, dental cleaning, and a trip to the emergency vet after an episode that I shall refer to as “The Vomity Calamity”), Sid and I were happy to have a fairly normal and uneventful week or so.

Being that it is still mid-winter here, we did get some more snow this past Sunday, but just enough to make everything look pretty and not the kind of snow where people collapse on the street while attempting to extract their cars from gigantic fluffy white mounds.

Winnemac park looks especially beautiful with a coating of snow. We’ve been getting up earlier than usual now that sun comes up sooner, so our morning walks have been very pleasant.

The park holds all the wonderful smells that Sid dreams about each night. I think the snow must enhance the smells as he can spend a good five minutes with his snout plastered to the base of a light post.

He also gets to observe and greet fellow canines. Or, depending on the pooch in question, he’ll just huff and puff and eventually bark at them from a safe distance (as he is demonstrating above).

He will sometimes track human boot prints in hopes that he may eventually find the human and they will have treats for him.

If this little guy tracked you down through the snow-filled tundra, you’d reward him with some baby carrots, right?

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes during Sid’s dental cleaning. I always worry whenever he has to be given anesthesia and it was comforting to know everyone had their fingers and paws crossed for him.

I’m happy to report he made it through the cleaning A-OK and did not require any extractions. Woo hoo! So, needless to say, he has happily returned to his normal routine of being spoiled (rotten) with treats.

I only hope he’ll eventually forgive me for making him fast for so long!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Hi there Pug Slopers!

Sid here today. I’m sorry if I seem a little grouchy today. It’s because I’ve been FASTING.

If you’re a pug, the concept will be completely foreign to you because we are not programmed to fast. I had to look up the term on google and basically it means CHOOSING to NOT EAT. Sorry, my brain just fizzled for a second while I attempted to process that concept.

See, I have to get my teeth cleaned today and I’m not supposed to have anything in my system when they do the cleaning. So the last morsel of food I had was YESTERDAY at NOON! Can you believe it? I bet you can’t, but it is most certainly true.

It is NO FUN, let me tell you.

I keep giving my dad the stink eye, but I’ve been unable to break him like I usually can. He gives a deep sigh every time I follow him into the kitchen since he can’t even give me a tiny baby carrot. He can’t look me in the eye, which I think means my fasting is hard on him, too, because he does like to spoil me (most of the time).

Please send me good juju for my dental cleaning today. I don’t want ANY extractions and don’t want the bill to totally eradicate my treat funds, either. Let’s just get the teeth sparkly clean, the nails trimmed, and get back to our normal eating routine.

On the plus side, my Dad said that once I’m done with my dental, I’m going to get SPOILED with treats and even get some extras for the ones I missed while fasting. At least that is something to look forward to!

When the weather gets brutally cold and I find myself cooped up at home, I finally find that I have time to do those little projects that I had put on the back burner during the more pleasant summer months when all I wanted to spend every minute outside.

Today’s project involved one of Sid’s many beds. He was given this bed as a gift for his 7th birthday back when he called NY home. While the sturdy material the bed is fashioned from had stood up well after repeated washings and feverish digging/nesting sessions courtesy of Sid, over time the stuffing had compressed and the bed just looked flat and sad.

During the summer, when I got the idea for this project, I had picked up a bag of fiber fill from Joann Fabrics for this very purpose. I wasn’t sure how much to get so I got a rather large bag (thinking I might eventually re-stuff one of his other beds, too!).

Plumping up the bed was much easier than I had anticipated. First, I took the bed to the laundromat and put it through the hot wash cycle to get it squeaky clean. I hope Sid doesn’t mind that the patches of peanut butter that were mashed into the fiber are now long gone!

I then cut a hole big enough for my hand to fit into on the underside of the bed and finally got to the fun part: I just began stuffing fistfuls of the fiber fill into the bed (making sure to pack it in tightly) and distributing it evenly throughout all the nooks and crannies. As you can see from the photo above, I ended up using up over half the bag! My Sid will not stand for a saggy bolster.

Then a quick row of stitches to seal up the hole and PRESTO! Good as new! In fact, BETTER THAN NEW!

I think he likes it, wouldn’t you agree?