Sid and Payton in Chicago, December 2011

What a sad day.  Payton, you little ball of inspiration and determination and perseverance and love, we’re honored to have gotten to know you through your amazing blog and to have had the opportunity to spend time with you in Chicago, and our thoughts today are with your wonderful, loving and supportive family.  You were a tough cookie, a spunky little sweetheart, Sid’s feisty older lady, and the embodiment of the pug motto “multum in parvo.” You are already missed.

*****

Please visit Payton’s blog, Pugnacious P, to read more about her experiences with PDE and to share your support with Payton’s family.

In the last few months, someone in our family has put on a few extra pounds. The family member in question has a flat face, likes treats, and still has a wart on his muzzle (named “Carl”). Did you guess who?

So yeah, it looks like it’s time for the infamous “Green Bean Diet”. I think the fur on the back of Sid’s neck stands on end any time the “D Word” is uttered. Sid is a smart cookie, though, and I’m certain he tried to bamboozle me when I brought him to the vet last week to pick up some prescriptions and to do a weigh in.

Vet Receptionist: “He’s 17.1 pounds”.

Me: “What the?! No way. He was almost 22 pounds the last time we were here. The scale must not have been zero-ed out or something. Could we try again please?”

Vet Receptionist: “Sure. OK – well, still looks like 17.1 pounds”.

Back Home:

Me: “Alright, Sid, who did you bribe at the vet to rig that scale? And 17 pounds?! C’mon! I don’t think you’ve weighed close to 17 pounds since you were a puppy!”

It’s true. I think the lightest Sid’s ever been under our watch was 18 pounds and he looked extremely slim at that weight. He looks like a fawn bratwurst now so there must have been some problem with that scale. I weighed myself on our home scale and then picked up Sid, and it looks like Sid is more like 24 pounds than 17. Who does he think he can fool?

So for breakfast and dinner now, Sid’s getting 2/3 of his regular food and 1/3 unsalted green beans. Yum!

Much to our surprise, Sid was actually super excited about the green beans. I guess we should have expected it. He has a thing for canned goods. He immediately got up to his usual shenanigans just as I was trying to take a photo of the green bean can.

I think he’ll have no trouble with the green beans as long as we don’t mention the “D Word”.

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.

Sid had his lady-friend, Miss Timothy Buttons, over to the Pug Slope Headquarters for a play date yesterday afternoon.  The weather was so nice outside, they both wanted to go swimming at the Prospect Park dog beach.  Unfortunately, I was taught that you don’t go swimming before Memorial Day (I have no idea where my mom came up with that one), so Sid and T-Buttz had to settle for the “beach” in our bathroom.

This deception compromise was a win-win for everybody, because these pugs were kinda ripe.  And, really, is the bath all that different than the beach?

Sid loves baths so he was on board right away, exclaiming over and over that he finds the beach to be sooooo relaxing, but by the time the suds were applied, I could tell that Timothy Buttons was getting suspicious.

Luckily, by the time she brought up the fact that her parents don’t normally slather her fur with conditioner at the beach, the official “bath time” was over and “post-bath-beach CRAZY time” had begun:

Phew!

Once we got the post-bath ya-yas out of everybody’s system, Sid and T-Buttz were ready for some strollin’ in the park.  Gotta show off those squeaky-clean coats!

Well, after surviving the mildest East Coast Winter EVER (did we even get any snow?), today we celebrate the official arrival of Spring.

We implore all of you to follow Sid’s simple guidelines for a successful Spring Equinox Celebration: go outside for a nice, sunny walk in Prospect Park with your favorite treat-giving humans, and while you’re there, be sure to take some time to stop and eat smell the daffodils!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: SID DID NOT ACTUALLY EAT ANY DAFFODILS DURING THIS PHOTO SHOOT, AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU! After making what I thought was an innocent joke, I hopped over to our good friend Google to do some Googlin’, and apparently Daffodils are highly toxic for dogs.  Like, beyond toxic.  Lethal.  Especially the bulb but apparently a small nibble of any part of the plant could make you guys sick.  So, yeah, DO NOT EAT THE DAFFODILS!!!

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: