Thank you all for the advice on how to help a pug shed a pound or two. We’re going to try the green bean approach combined with a little more vigorous exercise and see how it goes. We’ll keep you posted.

Unfortunately, Sid got a little overzealous when he heard the words “green beans”.

Even though he possesses an uncanny ability to distinguish food items from non-food items we bring home, he has never seen a green bean before, and when some giant green vegetables we brought home landed on the kitchen island, he figured they must be these magical green beans that his pug friends were talking about.

After a few sniffs, he was convinced.

I guess leeks must have a good smell to pugs because Sid was not going to give up!

Much to Sid’s disappointment, dogs are not supposed to eat leeks, so we quickly moved them out of the Sid Zone™. He wasn’t too happy with that but we were able to appease him with a few blueberries instead. Potential crisis averted.

Hope you all have a great, leek-free, weekend!

DISCLAIMER: Much to his dismay, no leeks were consumed by Sid during the creation of this blog post.

So at Sid’s recent vet visit to address the “mutant toe” we also got some other interesting news. It turns out our little guy isn’t so little anymore.

He tipped the scales at 22.8 pounds!

That may not seem like a lot but it’s the most he’s ever weighed.

We’re not sure if this extra padding is related to the Ginger-O’s incident, or lack of morning exercise time at the park due to the excessive rain we’ve been having, or perhaps Sid is just “letting himself go” now that he’s got a girlfriend.

Either way, we need to get Sid back to his 20-21 pound ideal weight.

Some potential solutions:

1. Aquatic exercises like his friend, Payton.

2. Invite Timothy Buttons, his girlfriend and personal trainer, over for more cardio-infused playdates.

3. Less treats (Sid has already strongly vetoed this one).

4. Doggie Dancing???

Anybody else have any thoughts on how to shed a pound or two?

Today is an exciting day at Pug Slope headquarters. Our pug count has doubled.

Timothy Buttons, Sid’s girlfriend, is spending the night. Yeah, I know this is a little controversial considering they’ve only been on one official date, but they have also hung out on numerous occasions at Prospect Park off-leash hours and who are we to stand in the way of love, right?

Timothy is a much younger pug than Sid, though, and he’s been having a hard time keeping up with her. His usual laid-back morning rest time has been replaced by hi-velocity madcap chase after hi-velocity madcap chase. This was his expression about 10 minutes into their 4th chase:

It’s been near-impossible to get any of our actual work work done today due to the compulsive need to grab our phones/cameras in order to document the hilarity that is ensuing around us.

More to follow…

The image below represents Sid when we ask him to do something he doesn’t want to.

“I can’t hear you…“

On a more serious note:

Please keep Sid’s little friend Winston in your thoughts. He’s got pneumonia (in the summer!) and had to spend the last two nights at the vet’s office. We ran into his humans yesterday and they said he’s going to be on some antibiotics and should be fine soon – but, as Puglet says, he could always use some “good juju” sent his way.

How much trouble can a pug get into in ten minutes?

Ohhhh, you’d be surprised.

Does this look like the face of guilt? Well, it should.

Let me back up a bit. I was feeling a little thirsty yesterday evening, so I ran out to the corner store to grab a soda. Jenn was out of the house, so I left Sid home alone. I was gone for about ten minutes and this is what I came home to.

The destroyed package wasn’t neatly displayed on our counter, though. It was on the floor of the bedroom, and our little rug was dappled with slightly-chewed morsels of cookie and gobs of cream filling mashed into the fibers.

This was not good on many levels.

First – I don’t know how many Newman’s Ginger-O’s a pug is supposed to eat in one sitting, but this definitely seemed larger than the recommended portion size. Second – Jenn specifically bought these cookies for herself because I, Brian, have this problem where I end up eating all the cookies before she has a chance to even eat one. Well, at least that won’t be an issue this time. And Third – the cookies were stored up on shelf #4 which Sid has never gotten into before. We always kept some food/produce up there because we figured it was beyond his reach. I guess we now have to keep anything edible on the top shelf. Thanks, dude.

Luckily the local emergency vet (who probably know us by name at this point) said our little gurgitator should be ok since there were no toxic ingredients in the cookies (Thank you, Paul Newman!).

Anyway – I hope you’re happy, fatso.

P.S. Now, don’t you pugs out there reading this get any ideas! Sid did get a severe “talking to” and we may have to take away his blog commenting privileges.

So, remember when we asked you all if Sid was a Dweeb Extrordinaire or an Evil Genius? (part 1 and part 2 should refresh your memories)

Well we now have photographic evidence to prove he is an evil genius.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with C. Montgomery Burns (a.k.a Mr. Burns) from the Simpsons. He’s a ruthless, wrinkled man who will do anything it takes to get what he wants.

Well, here’s your ruthless, wrinkled pug who will do anything it takes to get what he wants (and he usually succeeds!).

I know in his head he’s whispering “Excellent!“.

Last week, Jenn got a new body pillow and the plan was to give her old pillow to Sid. He had always liked the fluffy, over-sized pillow which apparently was the perfect material for nesting / thrashing around on. We indulge him occasionally, but since he has many of his own beds/cushions, we try to keep our own pillows off-limits.

Well, as you might have guessed, as soon as the new pillow arrived, Sid decided it was his. He zipped up on the bed faster than we could blink and planted on it.

As most of you know, pugs are quite immovable once they decide to plant, so we had to break out the big guns (i.e. apples and peanut butter in the kong) in order to get him to budge.

All ended well, though, and he actually prefers the old pillow as it smells like his mom.