Sid is a stickler for rules.  We always joke that Sid should wear a shirt that says “SECURITY” whenever he goes to the dog park. He apparently has a list of very strict guildelines that he expects all other dogs to abide by – no barking, no chasing, no excessive amounts of fun.  The other day when we were at the J.J. Byrne Dog Run with Lola and Stella Boo McMuffin, two incredibly gentle and well-behaved great danes showed up on the small-dog side of the park, and Sid had an opportunity to step up to the rule-enforcing plate.

Sid had no qualms about standing his ground to save Lola from having fun with these gigantic sweethearts beasts.  It’s obvious that Lola was terrified, right?

Then Sid took it upon himself to escort great dane #2 to the big-dog side of the park.

Somebody get this pug a stool and a flashlight and stick him outside a club!  I think he’s found his calling!

Hey, did you hear the news?  Last weekend, Sid and Lola got to hang out with the fabulous Stella Boo McMuffin, sister of long-time Pug Slope commenter, Eddie the Pug!

Sid and Lola met up with Stella at the J.J. Byrne Dog Run in Park Slope for some afternoon off-leash partying.  Sid and Stella hit it off immediately due to their love of travel – Stella has lived in San Francisco, London, and now Brooklyn!  Another thing they had in common was their love of fancy posin’.

Fancy posin’ over here!

 Fancy posin’ over there!

Lola and Stella really hit it off too…

Lola was thrilled to share her favorite orange ball with Stella.

Yup, Lola was totally fine with this situation.

But, seriously, we had a blast and we hope Sid and Lola helped Stella feel welcome in her new city.  Now, who wants a treat?!

We still have to recap about our exciting weekend meetup with fellow Brooklyn pug Stella, but before we do so, I wanted to see if there would be any interest in a project I felt would be fun to undertake.

If you’ve seen the various posts about the “Sid the Pug” comic book I made last Spring (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), you know that I enjoy drawing in my free time. Of course, since I’m a bit obsessed with Sid, he tends to be one of my frequent subjects.

Here are a few sketches of Sid from December:

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with using watercolors on the ink drawings. I’ve got a small moleskine watercolor sketchbook, so the images themselves are very tiny. I had a pug magazine lying around (who doesn’t?!) and I sketched a few of the pugs that were featured in said magazine. Here’s the results:

So this leads me to my idea for a project: Mini Pug Portraits.

I like to work on a small scale, so I was thinking about doing little ink & watercolor portraits, like the examples above, that would be about 2 or 3 inches square. I’m going to try to see if I can find mini wooden frames for these portraits. If you’d be interested in possibly having your pug’s portrait done in this fashion, please let me know in the comments. If I get enough interest, I’ll put up a post about how to submit your pug’s photo, etc.

P.S. If you’d like to keep up with my various sketches / drawings, here’s a link to my tumblr page: verygoodsir.tumblr.com

With the lovely Lola taking residence at the Pugslope HQ for the holiday weekend, Sid’s bed supply required sharing – which Sid, of course, wasn’t too happy about. Luckily, our flat-faced hero isn’t one to silently accept the new status quo. With the plucky determination of a young Rocky Balboa, Sid overcame insurmountable odds to make his own bed on the couch:

We were very impressed to see this marked improvement in his nesting skills. In only two years time he’s gone from haphazardly bashing his head into the pillows to this advanced and effective high-speed windmill technique. Watch out, Apollo Creed!

If you want a full breakdown of Siddhartha’s Patented Pillow-Punch Nesting System™, Sid told us he’ll be releasing an instructional DVD later this year.

So, while Miss Timothy Buttons was galavanting around the set of Rachel Ray, Sid was preparing the guest ela-bed for the arrival of one of his best little gal pals, Lola!

Lovely Lola spent the weekend with us while her ‘rents went out of town, and as you can imagine, Sid was THRILLED to share all of his toys and beds and treats for TWO WHOLE DAYS.

Like T-Buttz, Lola is a spunky young lady who just wants to play, play, play.

I don’t know why these sweet little chicas are so keen on getting the attention of this ol’ curmudgeon:

Seriously.

Lola didn’t let Sid’s “Donnie Downer” demeanor stop her from tryin’ to have fun, though. She and T-Buttz could teach a course in determination!

Sid, meanwhile, could teach a course on being a stick in the mud.

Yup, Sid, woe is you.

Okay, full disclosure – these photos are from, like, hour 53 of Lola’s visit, so I can forgive Sid’s lack of enthusiasm.  Overall, I think Lola and Sid had a great time hanging out. Really!  We have more pics and videos to post throughout the week, including pics of Sid and Lola at a pug meet-up with another sweet little lady pug whose brother is a regular reader of Pug Slope – so exciting!

AND!!!

We heard back from the vet about the lump on Sid’s back!  It’s not a cyst, and it’s not anything worse than a cyst.  Phew!  It’s a fatty lipoma – a little bundle of fat tissue that Sid has apparently decided to keep around just in case we ever forget to feed him.  So, thank you again for all of the juju!!!  And now that we know Sid is okay, we’re going to redirect all that super-powerful juju to anybody who just feels like they could use a little pep in their step as we round out these winter months.  Stay healthy, everybody!

Thank you, everybody, for all the good juju!  It’ll be a few more days before we get the test results from the vet, but it’s so good to know that Sid’s got friends like you out there supporting him.

In the meantime, how ’bout we all sit back and enjoy the antics of Sid and his boo, Timothy Buttons, in a video we like to call:

“The Desperation of Miss Timothy: A Lady’s Bid for the Attention of her True Love, Sid”

Oh, and speaking of Miss Timothy, look who’s hanging out on the set of Rachel Ray’s daytime talk show today:

(Still trying to locate T-Buttz in that second photo?  Look for the glowing, beady eyes on the kitchen island!)

Who has two dew claws and went to the vet this morning?

A week or two ago we noticed a weird, hard lump on Sid’s side, up near his back in the soft, fleshy zone between his rib cage and his hip bones.  We’ve been keeping an eye on it, and it hasn’t gone down, so off we went this morning to Sid’s favorite hang-out: the vet!

The vet took some samples of the lump and sent them off to the lab to be tested.  He said it feels like it could be a cyst but he wants to rule out the other thing that I won’t mention here at this time because the mere mention of it throws Brian and I into the throes of panic. He’s pretty convinced it’s a cyst, which is no biggie as long as it doesn’t get infected, but then he said that cysts are sometimes secondary, though, to those other things that we again won’t mention here at this time because the most important word in his statement was SOMETIMES, because “sometimes” doesn’t mean EVERY TIME so let’s just assume that this isn’t one of those times.  Oh, and then, on the plus side, the vet told his helper that Sid is one of the best-looking pugs in the neighborhood.  Sure, by “best-looking,” he could’ve meant “healthiest-looking,” but we all know he really meant that Sid is the handsomest.

The tests should be done in a few days. We’ll send out an update as soon as we hear back.

As always, any juju you can send Sid’s way is much appreciated.