Merrylog

Thank you, Mr. deBurgh, for the inspiration. :) A quick shot of the princess on a walk in our new hood.

Sneaking up to the princess with camera in hand never works. She could be snoring so loud you can hear her in the next country, but one whirr of the camera and her eyes are wide open, wondering if treats are about to be bestowed.

However, I managed to get a cute shot anyway. :) I do apologise for the same darned colors for the past week – our house is colored like our pug, all white and cream and tan and brown, which makes it tough to “mix it up”. I hope to have her wardrobe unpacked by mid-next week and we’ll finally have some colorful shots of a well dressed puglet by then!

Lacking photo inspiration today, I played in Photoshop instead and tried a faux-Orton effect (for those of you who follow such things – for those who don’t, look! cute pug photo!). Cute and fuzzy just like the princess.

Update on her eyes: Merry was finally taken off Maxitrol and is now on the lower-dose Ketorolac for her eyes, in addition to two other drops she’s on to help keep the pressure down. Her checkup went well on Friday and the eye doc we saw THAT day doesn’t feel we should do her other eye at all. However, it’s such a BIG difference from what the other eye doc said (there are three we see, they rotate) that I think I may discuss with another doc as well. The benefit of this? Second opinions without having to find another eye specialist. :)

The princess has always loved sitting on pillows, etc., with her butt up in the air. When she struck this pose today on the stairs, I had to run and fetch my camera in a hurry. What a silly girl! Have a super weekend, everyone.

Before you get too excited: yes, it’s a photo pulled from my vastly enormous archives of photos of the pug. But it illustrates a point I wanted to make: the pug is crazy for her toys and is really starting to miss them, moping around, and then standing all at attention if she hears the slightest noise that sounds like a toy.

We’re hoping to try a bit of play on the weekend, maybe with a soft squeaky toy if the eye doc OK’s it tomorrow. And if I’ve found her toys by then. *grin*. As most of my life is still in boxes, that may require some digging, but I’ll see what I can do.

Climbing up and down three – count em – three flights of stairs in our new place (it’s a tall, narrow house) is exhausting for a little pug, as you can see here. Behind Merry, you can see the barriers we made to protect the wee bit from falling down the stairs, made of 8 3/8″ crown moulding with a couple of 1″ routered square blocks for feet. They work pretty well!

I love how, when she yawns, her ears climb to the top of her head, just like the Grinch when he grins. :)

Well we made it through the exhausting weekend. I finally have ‘net access and am working like crazy to get caught up on the backlog of email from last week! As you can see, Merry is enjoying her new digs and has even mastered going up and down the stairs, as of this morning. What a little trooper!

She is also enjoying some cone-free time, when supervised, and is learning her new environment.

I am SO glad that’s over with. Folks, remind me to never try to do all this in a single month again, will ya? ;-)

More new pug photos to come!

My apologies for the light posting this week folks; getting ready to move both office and home is making for a crazy week. Luckily, it will soon be over.

The eye docs continue to be thrilled with Merry’s progress; we can start taking her cone off for supervised periods and probably completely in a week or two. The princess is very much enjoying the new freedom; she spent her first cone-free hour licking nearly every part of her body, just to prove she could do so. :)

Next week is our last weekly visit, and then we go to monthly checkups. We will also be discussing next week what we’re going to do about her other eye, which is nearly covered completely with a cataract; the eye doc is recommending we “move up” when her other eye would be done to just four months after her first surgery. I have mixed feelings. I’d like her to see, and the sooner we operate the better chance she has long-term (six is very early to lose one eye; if something goes wrong with the operated eye, she’ll be blind). But still, the idea of putting the pug (and us) through all of this just after the holidays is daunting.

Ach. Worry about that later – for now, let’s enjoy the move, little pug! ;) Have a great weekend, everyone.

The princess almost gave me a heart attack last night. Usually at least once a night I’m wakened by her trying to scratch the cone, aka trying to scratch her eyes but ending up hitting the cone instead. But last night at 3:30 am I was wakened by the sound of claw hitting fur.

Not good!

I bounced out of bed yelling her name and found her not in her normal nighttime bed of late but instead in her Faberge egg bed, sans cone. Somehow she’d managed to get into the egg bed, cone first – but as she tried to turn around in such tight quarters, it pulled her cone clear off (we found it in the very back of the bed). And of course the pug, delighted by this new freedom, set down to a good scratch.

We still have no idea where she was scratching – me yelling her name stopped her, so she wasn’t doing it by the time I reached her – but she seems to be OK. We sat up with her for an hour after the incident to monitor her eye and ensure she wasn’t going to start bleeding from the eye or bulging with extra fluid. It seemed to be OK, so we went back to bed, checking on her once or twice more through the night.

My fiance, of course, is convinced that the pug did not do this by accident but that this proves once again her Machiavellian talents in doing whatever it takes to get her way. :) I, on the other hand, am just relieved. Tempted, for a moment or two last night, to trade the pug for a goldfish (I’d sleep better), but relieved nonetheless. :)

Needless to say, the bed has been put away until after the cone comes off!

Merry had yet another post-op checkup today with her eye vet, and he’s very pleased with her progress. Even the oblong pupil I was concerned about is apparently a good thing – not something they planned on, but it will help to prevent glaucoma from developing in the eye. He tested her peripheral vision as well and said that she has six inches at least on each side of peripheral vision, and that that’s a good thing.

Clearly, I’ve been setting my expectations too high. :)

She’s been in the cone for 3 1/2 weeks now and I asked when it would no longer risk that eye to have her scratch it, or push her face into pillows/soft toys etc. The doc said six weeks from surgery, which means that the little bit will be in her cone most of the time for another 2 1/2 weeks, but that is still, at last, a final date we can shoot for!

Presumably, we can slowly start introducing toys at that point, though I’ll be checking more with the eye doc on that as things progress. :)

Still, it’s good news – and that’s good enough reason to wish you all a happy weekend!