Sid’s been the center of attention since his b-day earlier this month, and amid all the craziness of 1000 Pugs weekend, he also had two special non-pug (i.e. human) visitors.

It was Payton‘s ‘rents, Tim and Christy! They were in NYC for the last leg of their multi-city Remembering Payton tour and the NY/NJ 1000 Pugs photo shoot.

As soon as T & C set foot into PugSlope HQ, Sid knew he was in for a treat. Especially when he noticed the bright-colored gift bag Christy was toting. Like most of his flat-faced bretheren, Sid assumes that any bag or box that enters his domain (our apartment) is undeniably his. This time, he was actually right.

If I get close enough, I think I can see through the wrapping paper.

The first gift was a plush IntelliBone which is one of those puzzle-type toys that Sid goes ga-ga over. Plus every little component has a sqeaker inside so his mind was definitely blown.

It didn’t take Sid very long to pull all the plush donuts off the center bone, at which point he decided to show off by coyly using the bone as a head-rest. Yes, we are now justified when referring to him as a bonehead. Wah-wah.

This is how we store our bones on Planet Cool Sid.

Of course, we couldn’t just let him sit there all smug with his little peanut head resting on that bone. So we put the donuts back on. And he took them off again and proceeded to perch his head, victorious, on the bone again. After repeating this process a few more times, Sid was losing steam. By the end of night he just laid there like this:

Every five seconds or so, he’d gently squeeze the bone, just to confirm it was still there in his mouth and that he wasn’t dreaming.

But the excitement wasn’t over just yet. Another package was pulled from the bag. Inside was a framed photo of the fabulous Miss P herself along with a very special confidence shirt.

This shirt is actually the one that Payton is wearing in the photo. We were all moved by this very thoughtful gift (even Sid blushed – though he’ll never admit it) and were so glad we got to spend some time with such a great couple.

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!!

Yesterday some of you wondered how a “macho” pug like Sid would feel about his love for a pink horse named Derpy going public.  Well, somebody must’ve caught on to the fact that his private musings were being shared with the world.  Apparently Sid’s Journal is now VERY well hidden.  I can’t find it anywhere, but I’m not giving up.

I did notice something odd, though, when I woke up this morning.  A new video was being uploaded to the PugSlope YouTube account with the title “Sid the Pug and Derpy Pony.”  Unfortunately I couldn’t view it while it was uploading, so while Brian took Sid out for his morning walk, I shuffled through the papers on my desk to see if I could find any clues as to its content.  I found the following note:

I finally find my one true toy-mate and all they post on my blog is a stupid photo of me with my tongue hanging out? I let them record twenty-two minutes of footage the other night while I was playing with Derpy.  It was great stuff!  Golden!  Why has nobody edited that footage down into a short video that captures the essence of Derpy’s awesome awesomeness and my awesome manliness? Mom went to film school, for Pete’s sake!  Do I have to do everything around here?  Geesh!

“Okay, Focus, Sid.” Thanks, Derpy. (Hahaha, like Derpy can talk!)

First things first: Find appropriate song. Catchy but not too obvious.  Also not too stupid. Nothing stupid.  Like, when I told Timothy about Derpy she started singing that Ginuwine song “Come on and let’s do it, ride it, my pony,” which is apparently one of those songs that pugs her age dance to in the clubs and I don’t want to be associated with such frivolity because it’s dumb and Derpy deserves better, like something timeless and classic that speaks to the long road ahead of us and I know there’s that song about Wild Horses by those Rolling Stones guys who Mom plays all the time and I know everybody says I’ve only just met Derpy but sometimes I truly feel in my heart about Derpy the way that song makes me feel in my heart when I hear it.  But, that feeling I feel when I hear that song is a bittersweet longing for a future in which Derpy and I never part, a future that is impossible to attain because all things in this world must someday end, and thus the knowledge of that inevitable end must cloud the happiness of the now like the thin layer of gritty smog between my hometown of Los Angeles and the bring, blue sky, and that’s not how I want people to feel when they see the video of me and Derpy because I want them to only feel the joy and the excitement of our love as it exists today, not the unavoidable heartbreak that resides in the future.  Ah!  Here we go: an obscure Chubby Checker track called “Pony Time” that sounds exactly like “The Twist.”  Done and done. 

Step two: Edit the video so it goes really well with the music.  DUH.

Step three:  Step three should be “eat treats” but those bozos are still sleeping.  WHY IS NOBODY FEEDING ME??????  

Intriguing, right?!  And, guess what?!  The video’s finally online:

So, some local genius set up a pet boutique called Paws in Paradise next to a Mexican restaurant that serves $4 margaritas. We basically bought a million toys for Sid that night, including this lovely lass:

The pink pony was a risky, possibly-tequila-induced choice, but apparently our judgement was rock solid.  Derpy, as we’ve named her, instantly moved to the top of the toy hierarchy. Move over, potato, Sid’s a pink pony man now.

So, I told Sid how much you guys loved the video he made about his favorite new potato toy, and now he’s sitting in the corner moping and listening to Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” on repeat.  He says he can’t believe that I posted his private video on the blog and now everybody’s gonna think he’s all sappy and mushy, and he says that video was for Tater’s eyes only and if he knew how to use YouTube better he would’ve password-protected it because it was personal.  I tried to tell him that the ladies like a sensitive man, but he’s not hearing it.  He suggested that I could repair the damage to his reputation by posting some of the photos I took of him and Tater where he looks like a tough guy:

So, if you’ve been paying attention, then you know that Sid really, really, really loves his potato toys.  Yesterday we gave him a brand new yellow potato to bring on his evening walk in Prospect Park, and he held that little potato in his mouth throughout the entire 40-minute walk.  We brought along the camera so we got a lot of nice shots of Sid with his new best friend.  Here’s a few:

Cute photos, but nothing you haven’t seen before, right?  Well, I accidentally left my photo editing software open on my computer when Brian and I left for our trivia night.  When we came home, Sid was passed out at my keyboard, a notepad by his side.  The note read:

Start with photos of me walking down the street with Tater looking super cool and then zoom in to me still walking down the street with Tater in my mouth but try to crop out Mom because nobody needs to know that I need to wear a leash and I love Mom a lot but she’s not going to get between me and Tater and Mom just has to understand that I’m not a baby anymore, okay?  Then show me and Tater in the park near those wood chips that I like to rub my face into, and make sure to include that photo where Tater is hiding from me as I peek around the tree and find her, and you know what?  I’m gonna do it.  I’m gonna include the photo where I’m peeing on the tree with Tater in my mouth because THAT WAS SO AWESOME. Imagine me and you, I do, I think about you day and night, it’s only right, to think about the toy you love, and hold it tight, so happy together. I wish Mom and Dad would let me eat Honey Grahams.  But do they have that song?  Ugh, no.  I’m gonna have to buy it on iTunes.  What’s Mom’s password?  Oh, and then, after the photo of me peeing, cut to the photos where Tater and I are lying on the grass, and I get to hold Tater in my paws while I chomp chomp chomp, and then maybe some of the photos where I stand all studly with Tater in my mouth, and then the ones where Mom wants to take Tater from my mouth so she can throw it and I’m all like “nuh-uh, Mom,” and then…Hmmm, Ken Burns effect, or no Ken Burns effect?  Ken Burns effect.  Oh, man!  How do I upload to YouTube?

Well, Sid must’ve figured out how to upload, because when we went to our YouTube page, we found this:

PS:  We found this message scribbled on the other side of Sid’s notepad:

Remember to think good thoughts for Payton so that she can feel better and get excited about food and toys and other exciting things again without feeling sick because it stinks if you can’t be excited about all of the exciting things in life and Payton is cool and I miss her.  

Sid has a new best friend.  He also has a new gigantic wart on his muzzle.

Sid named his best friend “Cubby.”  We named his ginormous wart “Carl.”

Cubby’s here to stay, but we’re hoping that Carl can find a ticket on the next train home to Wartsville.

But, you know what? If Carl decides to stick around for a while, that’s fine with us.  Just as Sid’s love for Cubby can withstand a broken squeaker or a dousing of Timothy drool, Carl’s warty presence could never diminish our love for Sid.  We love this pug, warts and all!