Thank you for sending good pug juju over to Sid. His eyelid healed up perfectly and the dental extractions have healed as well. It’s now been two weeks since his dental cleaning and eyelid surgery so it’s finally time to ditch the cone. Although I couldn’t resist just a few more pics of him in his cone, especially this one where he is sunbathing in his home-made “short cone”.

See, the standard cone is great when Sid’s at home but when we go on walks the extreme length of it gets in the way of his sniffing abilities – especially when he’s attempting to sniff the ground to do his business. I had immediately sensed his frustration and with a quick modification of a plastic salad container, came up with a solution. I guess when the cone manufacturers were creating the standard cone sizes, they didn’t take into account the inverse relation between the pug’s nick girth (huge) and snout length (practically zero).

His short cone even caused him to become a local celebrity when the staff at our local pet store couldn’t resist sharing a pic of him in this admittedly-hilarious contraption.

Well, rest assured, after his follow up appointment at the vet yesterday Sid is now comfortably cone-free and back to his usual shenanigans.

Hey all you lovely Pug Slopers!

Sid here with you today. My voice may seem louder today because it is being amplified by the enormous cone surrounding my head.

Worry not, though, my friends. All is well with this pug. I am just recovering from a long vet visit on Monday. I went in for a dental cleaning and surgery to remove a small mass that was growing on my eyelid. Luckily I was knocked out for the whole thing so I didn’t feel a thing. The talented Dr. Delia and the awesome staff at Duke Animal Hospital took excellent care of me the whole day.

Although I had a few teeth extracted, got my eyebrow fur shaved off, and went without food for 24 hours prior to the surgery (yep, it was the worst), I’m loving the soft dog food I get to eat for the next two weeks! I like to make a real mess of it, too. My dad can’t stand the smell of the wet food. Let’s just call it payback. Ha ha!

While everything appears to be healing well, if you could send some positive pug juju my way I would be ever grateful! THANK YOU!

xo Sid

Thank you all for sending the good pug juju! I’m sure it is helping heal Sid’s eye abrasion.

How about all this snow?! It certainly is incredible. We went from zero inches to about 20 in just one day (Sunday). Personally I think it’s amazing. Although I’d imagine I might be feeling different if I didn’t work from home and had to attempt to commute through the snow. Many cars parked on the streets are still deeply buried and may stay that way until Spring.

If you’re wondering why Sid has a salad container on his head, it’s my latest invention – the STOUT SNOUT CONE (patent pending)! See, a regular-length cone is fine for dogs that have normal size snouts, but flat-faced breeds have no joy when trying to sniff out the ideal “business spot”; they just can’t get close enough to the target. With the STOUT SNOUT CONE, your flat-faced friend can sniff the trees with ease. What do you think?!

Well folks…turns out Sid spoke a little too soon. His eye is still bothering him and when I took him to the vet yesterday to see what was up, it appeared that his little injury hasn’t quite completely healed. Well, actually it likely did heal at some point but then when he rubbed or scratched his face he essentially un-did the healing. Ugh. So this is likely 100% my fault because I didn’t subject him to 24-7 cone humiliation. See what happens when you cave in to “pug pressure”?!

So now we are strictly adhering to the recommended round-the-clock conage and we’re back to administering drops every four hours (that includes in the middle of the night! Perhaps my next post will be at 4am!).

Sid could use any good pug juju you could send his way. We want this little abrasion to heal up completely so he can get back to his normal cone-free existence. Thank you in advance.

Hi everyone! Sid here today. And it will probably be that way for a while now.

See, I’ve banned my dad from the computer until he removes this goofy plastic satellite dish from my head.

About two weeks ago I got a tiny scratch on my eyeball and my dad took me to the vet. It actually didn’t really bother me much and the vet said the abrasion looked very shallow. They gave my dad a bottle of eye drops to dispense into my glossy orb four times per day to prevent infection while it healed. They also said that I had to wear a cone – though they called it an “E-Collar” (probably to confuse me) – so I wouldn’t mess around and scratch my eye further.

For two weeks, four times a day, my dad would corner me into the bathroom and squirt a drop or two of the meds into my eye. Let me tell you – those drops were flipping annoying so I made the situation as difficult as possible by TIGHTLY CLOSING my eye and flailing around like one of those air dancers you see outside of car dealerships. But my dad is very persistant and eventually a drop would find its way into my eye. Then I’d have to immediately don this ridiculous contraption. My eye actually didn’t bother me much (it only felt weird for a few minutes after the drops went in) so I only had to be humiliated for about a half an hour after each dose. THANK GOODNESS. I don’t know what I might have had to resort to had I been subjected to the vet-recommended 24-hour cone treatment. Eat the couch? Poop on my dad’s pillow? It might have just come to that.

Well, my eye has healed up very well and at my last check-up the vet said my eye looked like nothing ever happened. Woo hoo!

But before I take this goofy cone off for good, I have a small request. Trust me, it will be hilarious.

I want everyone to sing along with me to Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” but instead of singing the real lyrics on the chorus, let’s all sing: “Bom Bom Bom, Satellite of Pug!”. A one, a two, a one, two, three…

As most of you know, Sid’s severe allergies to mother earth make him the ultimate bubble-dog. We’ve tried elimination diets, Atopica, OTC medications (Benadryl, Zyrtec, etc.), (very expensive) skin allergy tests, (also very expensive) allergy shots, t-shirts, medicated shampoos, soothing sprays and lotions, and though all that the one thing that seems to work the best is prednisone (or prednisolone). I know that it’s not ideal to take a steroid long-term (remember CARL and his friends?!), but I also want Sid to have a comfortable life. When he’s been on the prednisone, the dose is very small and he only gets it every other day. It allows him to lead an itch-free existence and he can put the energy he would have expended on scratching to better use (e.g. pulling all his toys out and scattering them over the whole apartment).

First, the good news: Sid’s been off his low every-other-day prenisone routine for almost two months! He’s definitely been on the itchier side but it doesn’t seem to disrupt his normal pug activities (i.e. eating, sleeping, and staring at me until I give him treats).

The bad news: his allergies have started flaring up lately and he has scratched a few raw spots on his (adorable) face. It’s nothing major, I just don’t want him to scratch any more of the raw spots, which has led to the following…

PROGNOSIS: Cone head for the rest of the week. Sorry, little buddy!