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

Sid is half-way through his six-session cold laser therapy program for his back & hing leg and he’s been doing very well. It’s hard to say if it’s just time that has helped him regain his stride or the cold laser therapy or (most likely) a combination of both things.

With a laser, it is required that everyone in the room wear eye protection — including the pug!

Sid isn’t crazy about wearing the tiny goggles, but each session only lasts a few minutes, so I don’t feel too bad. Plus they are hilarious.

We hope you all are having a pleasant January. It has been unusually warm here in Chicago — especially for January! In lieu of snow we’ve been getting tons of rain which makes walks difficult because, as we all know, pugs REFUSE to walk in the rain.

Another thing that has made walks difficult is that one of Sid’s rear legs decided it would stop working properly on Saturday morning.

He didn’t seem to be in any distress and would put weight on his left hind leg but something was clearly not normal. His gait was wobbly and he also kept his rear end tucked a bit, so it was off the vet. Hooray!

Well, there were no signs of pain or distress which was a relief. After examining him and looking at the symptoms, the vet suspected Sid may have experienced some mild disc compression in his back.

He received some fancy laser treatment on his back and some meds to help with any inflammation. He’s doing much better today and he’s got more of the normal pep in his step. But I wouldn’t say he’s 100-percent back to normal. If you could spare some good pug juju, please send a little our way. I’m hopeful he’ll be back to strutting his stuff again in a couple more days but for now we’re keeping our walks short, naps long, and the little guy gets carried up and down all stairs (I secretly think he may be faking the whole thing for this reason).

Hey guys! Sid with you today.

Sorry I’ve been away for a bit longer than usual. Life had been humming along pretty normally here at Pug Slope HQ until Saturday morning at 4am when I awoke abruptly from my sleep due to a pain in my back and neck area. It came and went suddenly. My Dad bolted up to see what was the matter and said I was just sitting on the bed frozen, like a pug statue. It was because I was afraid if I moved I might get another jolt.

He took me outside because he thought it might have been gas or something but I did my business like normal and then felt fine and plopped right back to bed.

The next day I just couldn’t get comfortable. No sharp pains or anything but I just kept sitting on the edge of my bed instead of nestling down like I usually do. I was eating fine (you know something is SERIOUSLY wrong when a pug stops eating!) and had no problems walking or anything, but I was restless. In the early evening, since I wasn’t really improving, my Dad loaded me up into the rental car and drove me to the emergency vet.

I’m sure many of you have been to a place that looked JUST LIKE THIS! I tend to get into hyper/nervous mode at the vet’s office (especially the EMERGENCY vet’s office) so I was pacing around, panting, and evading humans by scurrying under chairs. Notice the sad tail. Luckily, the humans there ended up being very nice and were gentle to me.

The vet lady checked me out and all my vitals looked ok. She adjusted my head and worked her fingers on my back to see if it caused me any discomfort, but I didn’t feel any jolts like I did at 4am, which was good. She suspected I just tweaked my back or neck somehow (Maybe it was that bad dream I had where the grocery store ran out of baby carrots!). She gave my dad a vial of some “pug happy pills” that are supposed to help me with any discomfort for the next few days.

I do feel much better today and have been able to squish into my bed like normal, so it sounds like my back is untweaking itself. I was even able to flatten out on the floor!

Please send me a little good pug juju if you can spare to make sure my back stays in its normal UNTWEAKED state. In fact let’s never mention that awful T word again and instead focus on the good T word (the one that ends with “reat”).

Hi there Pug Slopers!

Sid here today. I’m sorry if I seem a little grouchy today. It’s because I’ve been FASTING.

If you’re a pug, the concept will be completely foreign to you because we are not programmed to fast. I had to look up the term on google and basically it means CHOOSING to NOT EAT. Sorry, my brain just fizzled for a second while I attempted to process that concept.

See, I have to get my teeth cleaned today and I’m not supposed to have anything in my system when they do the cleaning. So the last morsel of food I had was YESTERDAY at NOON! Can you believe it? I bet you can’t, but it is most certainly true.

It is NO FUN, let me tell you.

I keep giving my dad the stink eye, but I’ve been unable to break him like I usually can. He gives a deep sigh every time I follow him into the kitchen since he can’t even give me a tiny baby carrot. He can’t look me in the eye, which I think means my fasting is hard on him, too, because he does like to spoil me (most of the time).

Please send me good juju for my dental cleaning today. I don’t want ANY extractions and don’t want the bill to totally eradicate my treat funds, either. Let’s just get the teeth sparkly clean, the nails trimmed, and get back to our normal eating routine.

On the plus side, my Dad said that once I’m done with my dental, I’m going to get SPOILED with treats and even get some extras for the ones I missed while fasting. At least that is something to look forward to!

Okay, after yesterday’s public freak-out (Thank you, everybody, for your kind and supportive comments!  What would we do without you??), I’m going to focus today on the good aspects of Sid’s allergy treatment thus far, while Sid focuses on Jimmy-ing for carrots:

The no-nonsense Jimmy

First, it’s been almost a month and a half since Sid has had any prednisone, and it’s been almost a month since the Carls Jr wart colony was removed from his face.  The only wart that the vet didn’t remove was a wart that we nicknamed “Petra” – Petra was a majestic structure growing on the surface of Sid’s tongue (If you don’t recognize the actual Petra just for being an amazing wonder of the world located in Jordan, then you may recognize it from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” – I like to imagine that there’s a wart version of the holy grail stashed inside the Petra on Sid’s tongue…)  Well, guess, what.  Not only has Sid developed no new warts since the last bunch were removed, but Petra has disappeared!!!  PROGRESS, PEOPLE!!! 

The “How YOU doin'” Jimmy

Secondly, for not being on prednisone, Sid’s skin looks fantastic and he really isn’t scratching too much.  I think that the discovery of the yeast allergy during his skin allergen test really solved a HUGE source of his discomfort.  He’s just wrapping up a 28-day regimen of Fluconazole, and will now go into a maintenance dosage.  Also, we’ve gotten anti-yeast ear drops, face / skin wipes, and shampoo, so we can attack the yeast topically as well.  There are still some obvious spots that are irritating him, and he still gets some scratch-attacks, but he seems pretty comfortable throughout 80% of the day.

The too close for comfort Jimmy

Next, after administering the first two doses of the allergy shots, Sid’s had no severe side effects.  In fact, I don’t think he’s had any side effects at all.  Considering what a weirdo Sid’s immune system is, we’re amazed.  The vet gave us a print-out with all of the signs of severe side effects to look out for, so I was pretty much expecting him to swell up like Violet in Willy Wonka within minutes of receiving the first injection.  (No, becoming a gigantic blueberry is not listed as one of the side effects, but I wouldn’t put it past Sid to come up with some new and horrible reaction to the shots).  In fact, I don’t even know if he’s noticed what we’re doing – all he cares about is the fact that he gets a treat when we’re done.

Oh, and speaking of things that are good – PUG NECK SCRUFF!!  I can’t imagine doing these shots on dogs that don’t have a spare tire of neck fat to grab onto.

The Post-Jimmy-Success Smile and Sit!

So, yes, it’s going to take time to get used to this new routine, and to get used to jabbing a syringe into the neck of my beloved boy (?!?!), but when we focus on the positive, and focus on the minor successes we’ve had so far, it’s clear that in the end it’ll all be worth it.

So, we’ve officially started Sid on his allergy shots. He’s allergic to so many things that we have two different vials of serum and two concurrent dosage schedules that we alternate between. It’s very complicated. Right now, he gets a shot every other day, alternating between the two serums, increasing the dosage incrementally as we move forward, until early September when the schedule just starts getting CRAZY. Then it’s four days between shots, nine days between shots, six days between shots…Brian and I spent an hour the other day putting together a calendar to help us stay on track through the end of December.

But, after completing the first two scheduled injections, I think I’m going to need to add “Jenn Spa Days” to the calendar, or perhaps invest in a bulk supply of valium. Do they sell valium at Costco? Maybe I just haven’t had to do a lot of stressful things in my life, but, great holy moley, sticking your beloved pug with a hypodermic needle is STRESSFUL.

Did you get out all of the air bubbles? Did you remember to warm up the serum-filled needle by rolling it between your palms? Ack!  You didn’t warm it up – what happens if you inject cold allergen serum into his little body? 

Did you hit a vein? Oh, man – you didn’t think you hit a vein, but after you removed the needle there was blood in it – did you just inject allergens straight into his blood stream? What happens if you injected the allergens straight into his blood stream?  

Are you inserting the needle straight into the wad of Sid’s neck scruff that Brian’s gripping so that the needle is parallel to Sid’s body so as to not hit anything important? I mean, you think you did, but could it’ve been a 10 or 15 degree angle?  What happens if you insert the needle at a 15 degree angle?  Did you just inject allergens into his spine?

Why won’t he stay still?!

AM I HURTING HIM???

This is gonna get easier, right??