Allie the Pug Lives Here!

Caroline has decided that every other year she's going to get herself a pug for my birthday.

In 2000 it was Panda; in 2002, it's Allie.

So we applied to Ohio Pug Rescue and a few weeks later Angela contacted us. She said they've rescued 22 pugs in the first two months of 2002.

Two of those pugs, Allie (age 6) and Abby (4), were roomies who'd been surrendered by their owners. They'd just had a premature baby who suffered from allergies. So Allie and Abby had to go. Abby was quickly adopted, but Allie weighed a hefty 35 pounds, so they waited to make sure she didn't have thyroid problems.

Allie was put on the thyroid medication and she lost 5 pounds. More blood work indicated that she didn't need the medicine, so they took her off of it. She immediately gained another pound, so she went back on the L-Thyroxin.

She also needed daily eye drops. When Angela asked if a "special needs pug" would be a hardship, we said no. After our experience with Tiggy's health problems, there aren't too many "special needs" that are beyond our capacity.

Then Allie's foster mother Karen Ray called and she and Caroline talked quite a bit about pugs and stuff. I don't know what they talked about, but I could hear the laughter. After the various formalities were completed, Karen and her husband Mike planned to bring Allie down from Columbus on March 2nd. (Allie was originally rescued in Cincinnati, was whisked to Columbus, then ended up back here in Cincinnati. I think she views it as a mini vacation from the Queen City.)

Despite dire predictions of copious amounts of snow, it only rained, so Karen and Mike were able to make the trip with Allie asleep in the back seat.

Karen is hardcore. She will refuse to allow a pug to stay with people she deems unfit, an attitude we wholly endorse. Fortunately we were deemed worthy and Allie was allowed to stay. (I think it was our collection of pug stamps from around the world that sealed the deal. Mike sure seemed to like them, anyway.)

A few days later we introduced Allie to our vet, Dr. Bercz. He liked her quite a lot. She wasn't too sure about the poking and prodding. After some more blood tests, it turns out that Allie doesn't have a thyroid problem but rather a snacking problem. So she's on a diet. Although she's as sweet as can be, she's clearly not crazy about this whole diet thing. Spike, who once weighed 32 pounds and now checks in at a buff 22, commiserates with her.

Dr. Bercz also confirmed our suspicions about Allie's eyesight. She suffers from exposure keratitis - basically her corneas are covered with pigment because her eyes are dry and are easily irritated. It's a common malady in bug-eyed pugs, and if left untreated it causes complete loss of vision and often necessitates the removal of the entire eye. So now Allie gets a drop of cyclosporin in each eye twice a day, as well as a drop of dexasporin in each eye twice a day. She's really not happy about that and hides under the table when the eye dropper comes out. Clearly putting her remaining vision to good use.

Her impaired vision definitely causes her problems, chief among them learning the ins and outs of a new house. We have to watch her carefully to make sure she doesn't accidentally hurt herself by running into (or off of) something she can't see, but she's quickly learning the layout of the house and yard.

The first night she was here we didn't feel like cooking so we just got a pizza. Allie had been a little uncertain up to that point, what with different people, different dogs and a whole new house to learn, but as soon as she caught the scent she was knocking Spike and Panda out of the way to get to that yummy pie. Her leaps of joy when the pizza arrived were a pretty big clue about the cause of the girth problem.

She won't go down stairs, which we first attributed to her blocked vision, but after watching her eat for a week, I think the real problem is that she's too front heavy. Her back legs come off the ground as she puts her head in the bowl and her center of gravity shifts forward. This is not a good thing for negotiating stairs. By this time next year she'll be slim and trim and hopefully she'll then be able to use the stairs.

Even if she doesn't, she'll at least be easier to lift.

In order to get Allie to eat the not-so-yummy diet dog food, I mixed in a few crumbled-up snacks or a spoonful of wet dog food. After a few weeks we ran out of snacks and wet food all at once (some mornings I'm just not good with numbers). So I put the bowl of dry diet food in front of Allie and said, "Sorry, but that's all there is today." She looked decidedly unhappy and, after nosing it for a moment, looked up at me as if to psychically remind me that I'd forgotten something. I just stood there watching her.

The combination of her growling tummy and the fact that Spike and Panda were going through their food like chipper-shredders through a hedgerow convinced her to take a bite. Breakthrough! Now she eats the diet food like it was pizza itself. Well, okay, not like pizza, nothing's like pizza, but she eats it.

Spike was once the benchmark for wolfing his food. He'd gulp it down and look forlornly at Tiggy while she took her time. Then Panda showed us how it was really done. Panda rivals a vacuum cleaner for food inhalation. No foolin'. Suddenly Panda was the one standing around watching Tiggy and Spike as if she'd been gypped, for surely she hadn't gotten as much food since those two clearly were still eating. Now comes Allie. Allie is indubitably the all-time, record-beating, world-class champeen at eating her food slooooowly.

I have never seen a dog linger so long over a meal. Even without the added incentives, Allie seemingly savors every single gustatory sensation. In the amount of time it takes her to finish half a cup of food, Spike and Panda would normally have eaten, gone outside and returned to bed to resume their REM cycles. But now they have to wait around for Allie to finish, because they just know that she'll drop a morsel or two. And they're right. It's clearly very exhausting for them, particularly the mega-greedy Panda, who literally quivers at the sound of anyone else eating. How a dog who eats so slowly got so fat is a mystery to me. And to Panda.

As I write this it's been exactly one month since Allie came to stay. I don't know what she weighs now, but she's definitely lost weight because she has a waist again.

All this talk of diet food might make it seem like we deprive the pugs of any edible joy they might take in life. Not true. Today, in fact, they've had their regular pug snacks as well as bits of ham, some potato chips and a small helping of lemon meringue pie. But with the diet food as comparison, now they really enjoy the treats.

Treats led to today's breakthrough for Allie. I made myself a ham sandwich for lunch and shared the trimmings with them which caused puggy ecstasy. And leaping. I took my lunch upstairs to return to the computer, which was incentive enough for Allie to come charging up the stairs after that ham sandwich. (I don't suffer delusions about my popularity with pugs when comparing myself to a sandwich.) She climbed the stairs two more times, although she slipped slightly and scared herself the third time. So I had to carry her up tonight, but she had a breakthrough nonetheless. We still have some way to go before Allie feels comfortable negotiating the stairs by herself, but any trips I don't have to hoist her are victories in my book.

And my back.


		« Allie has come to stay.
	Karen and Mike from Ohio Pug Rescue dropped her off. »
		« She immediately found the rawhide.
	She carried around the Greenie dog chew as she explored the joint. (Does anyone else see a theme begin to emerge?) »
		« After a few hours of getting acquainted she was plum tuckered.

		« Allie learns the ropes by following Spike and Panda around.
	"So to get a snack all we have to do is sit?" »
		« That first step is a doozy.
	Stairs are difficult, but she perseveres. »
		« Allie checks out the yard.
	"I think I like this place. Especially that part about snacks!" »