Merrylog

Winter has been SO messed up this year – by turns cold, occasionally snowy, and then weirdly warm and sweater-free but grey and rainy or cloudy and dull. Case in point: huge amount of snow yesterday, we shoveled twice. Today, it’s expected to be 7 degrees above freezing.

What exactly do you dress a pug in when the weather is so weird? Merry’s been in everything from hoodies (warm days) to full winter gear – t shirt, coat and boots.

Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the seed catalogs that came in the mail yesterday, but I’m dreaming of spring. With that in mind, I share a photo from last spring (pre-eye injury).

Here’s hoping you’re surviving whatever winter weather you’re having!

Happy 2012! It’s January – and it’s been a chilly start to the new year. Luckily,  the puglet has many ways of keeping warm: cuddling with humans, wearing fabulous sweaters, and bundling up in Mom’s favourite blanket. Hope your new year has been cuddly warm as well!

Where on earth did the autumn go? Well, I can tell you – learning how to parent a teenager full-time, and playing nursemaid to a pug with a (still) bad eye. As a result Merrylog has languished for far too long without an update.

What’s new in the world of Merry? I wish I could tell you that her eye was 100% back to normal, but the truth is we’re still healing the ulcer although it’s now superficial (it no longer picks up stain during an exam, which means it’s in the top layers of the eye only). But the real problem has been the glaucoma. She still flirts in between 20 and 30 in eye pressure, and she’s basically on the maximum eye meds she can be to reduce pressure. What that boils down to is a crapshoot of eye vet visits – will the pressure shoot sky high again? Will the pressure be stable? Will even this high but stable, ish, pressure be so much that eventually they may have to take the eye/kill the eye anyway?

Oh, to have a single two week period where we’re not worrying about the furball! :)

However, as you can see, the princess has been learning new tricks! Just a month or two ago, my stepdaughter taught her how to shake a paw and now she’ll come up to you and just waggle her paw in the air hoping to get a treat. It’s adorable.

I thank all four of you who are still reading this for your continuing patience. I promise, at least ONE holiday photo of the puglet before the big guy in the red suit comes! :)

After a great deal of dithering and wondering whether we’d be able to take our scheduled vacation due to three-times-a-week-at-the-eye-vet, we managed to luck out with her eye and finally it started to fill up with healing blood, which is what we were all waiting for, and her glaucoma stabilized thanks to over the top eye pressure meds, so we were able to take our week off. Yay!

This year’s vacation wasn’t nearly as fun for the pug, I hate to say, since she couldn’t do a huge amount outside with the whole cone/blind thing (you have no idea how tough it is to walk a blind pug wearing a cone! Her sense of direction is completely thrown off and she walks all over the place and has to be watched Very Carefully). However I did try to make sure we cuddled her plenty when in the cottage and she did at least get to soak up wonderful breeze coming off the lake and a nice sunny area to lie in (she loved lying in this doorway all week long).

We’ve had one checkup since we got back and things are still progressing, though the eye doc is now muttering about some scarring. Since the pug was 90% blind anyway, I can’t see that it will make a huge difference, but we’ll have to wait and see. He still generally feels good about the eye and tells us that it is healing, which is the important thing. And we’re now on every TWO weeks for visits, a record for us this summer!

Thank you to ALL of you for your love, support, and comments in the last post. Now that we’re actually back home and not running back to the eye vet 3x weekly, I plan to get more pictures of the delectable princess up here for everyone to enjoy. :)

After a picnic and a rousing game of fetch on the beach, we brought the princess home to have her “birthday cake” – a thin slice of banana bread with a plain yogurt topping. She looooves yogurt. She was ecstatic, as you can see. If I ever figure out how to edit video, I have a hilarious full video of her eating this entire thing. Thanks for your patience folks – I’m photo-smart, but video-impaired. (Can’t work a fax machine either, but that’s another story.) More photos from her birthday tomorrow – more action-infused beach shots! :)

Yes, I know everyone thinks of them as weeds and pulls out chemicals every year to get rid of the things. But honestly? Dandelions are one of my favourite flowers. They decorate the world for a week or two each spring, turning everything sunny yellow and cheerful. Then they turn to gorgeous big puffballs of seed, equally lovely and totally different and ensuring an even more vibrant show the following year. Plus, the greens are wicked yum. I’m thinking of saving a big bunch of seed this year and making a concentrated planting in my backyard so that next year we can have some delish salads in the springtime.

The princess pug, on the other hand, just likes sniffing around them. :)

Bathed in the soft evening light, the blind little pug seeks her owner… in a head tilt her dad and I have come to name as “looking for God” – or “begging the ceiling”, particularly when there’s food around. :)

Pugs just always look worried. It made for a confusing first few months with Merry after I brought her home; I was never sure if she was upset or if she was just, you know, a pug. Time and paying attention eventually taught me how to recognize true concern on her face vs. her essential pugginess. :)

Extra bonus: Lookit that underbite! Just want to smoosh it between my hands! Yes, she’s a cutie.

Poor pug. Both her Dad and I have been hit with one heck of a wicked cold. It has laid both of us out flat for nearly a week – I don’t think we’ve ever had such an unproductive slothy weekend before. Literally all we did was sleep, eat, and couch. As a result, the pug got lots of cuddle time but very little play time and very short walks. I was finally able to drag myself off the couch yesterday for long enough to do a brief photo shoot in the office – where, above, Merry shared with me her thoughts on the situation.

Caught during our week of holidays before all the s-n-o-w arrived around here. Merry would like you to know that she misses the grass, but sends big pug cuddles to all of you.