For the love of a pug

I can’t help it. I’m a pug fanatic. Blame Kay Thompson’s Eloise. Have you seen Hilary Knight’s pug? It belongs to Eloise and his name is Weenie.

Who wouldn't want a pug named Weenie? As a child I had a feeling I would have a pug of my own. A friend of mine from college had one. I went to visit her after her first daughter was born. You know who greeted me at the door? A little girl pug with a pearl collar necklace. I was smitten.

Pugs used to have much longer legs, as you can see from this print we found in London

My love affair started with a rescue pug. I fell head over heels with this middle aged lady with bad eyesight and she felt a connection to me too. I knew pugs had eye issues. I was prepared. At the pug adoption her name was "Pugsley," but that wouldn't do. She was Lucy to me.

Eye drops, anti-inflammation pills and ointments kept her poor eyesight from getting worse. She had a condition where her eyelids turned in onto the cornea so her fur scratched and irritated her eyes. Though she she eventually lost her sight, that didn't keep her from getting around. She was my lapdog.

Pencil drawing of Lucy in my bed

About two years later we added another rescue pug to our household. Brutus. Before children, for entertainment, we would drive around the neighborhood looking for other dogs out on a walk. Lucy used to get so worked up over other dogs out walking. She hated seeing that - what little she could see. Brutus came along for the excitement.

Miniature watercolor I did of our boy Brutus. He loved to rub his whole body in our rosemary plants - hence the sprig by his side. I also used this pose in my pug Christmas card above

We couldn't go anywhere without thinking of our pugs.

Brutus smothering poor Lucy in their bed

Journal entry from our Himalayan extravaganza

I was pregnant with triplets. Life went on as usual for a short while longer.

My reaction to a boudoir pregnancy shoot, with steadfast Brutus

The calm before the storm - look at my swollen face. You try growing three humans!

Then we had children. Our pugs were vexed. Jack, the oldest of my triplets, had some kind of macho war going on with Brutus. Things escalated slowly until one day Jack tried to grab Brutus’s tail. In an instant, Jack was screaming and he had a giant gash across his cheek. His face was literally ripped open. I knew he needed stitches.

His scar is a constant reminder of that fateful day. We couldn't risk another incident, so Brutus went to go live with my mother 45 minutes away. It was so sad, but I think Brute felt more like himself without constantly being under the feet of four toddlers.

One of the hardest things I have ever done is put Lucy down. She was suffering from congestive heart failure - it was the most humane thing to do at this point. I held her (never thought I'd be able to do it) while vet our gently injected her with the infusion. She fought it - that was horrible. I held her, sobbing, and suddenly, she went limp. That was it. One moment she was alive and then not. That was such a raw experience - I haven't bawled like that since I was a child.

My sons keep her ashes in their bedroom.

Wolfie was pug number three. I found him from a breeder in Sherman Oaks. "Chester" was a year old and she was looking to find him a home. Couldn't keep that name - sounded like a creepy dude in a trench coat.

Wolfie the stud

My marriage circled the toilet the following year. We moved to North Carolina as a last ditch geographical fix that turned into a vain attempt to stay together for the kids. My mother took Wolfie to her house (Brutus had passed away two years earlier) to keep him until we were settled. We never did get settled. Six months after we left California, I found myself back again with my children. Financially I was out of luck. Wolfie stayed down at my mother's house, and she decided he was her dog from that point on. I didn't have the mental or emotional energy to fight it.

Besides, we were now moving to Florida.

About five months later, I started to get antsy for another pug. I saw an ad for a little black girl across the state near Ft. Lauderdale. The kids and I drove across the Everglades to meet her and it was love at first sight. I always wanted a black pug, just because! They look like those little imps from Flemish paintings - the ones where they are pulling wretched souls down into hell.

Oh my God!

My son with our pug Chloe

My other son in pug puppy heaven - this fawn baby was the only one in the litter that wasn't black

What could be better than having a gaggle of pugs climb all over you?

My daughter in her element - teach your children to be kind to animals!

You have never lived until you've been assaulted by a whole gaggle of pug puppies.

She was not ready to come home with us, but three weeks later I made the trip to go bring her home.

She's been our little black bitch ever since.

Waiting for my boys to come out

Pug at the table

Turning white

Pugs snore like there's no tomorrow. They are also extremely motivated by food. Chloe turns into a wet gremlin when she gets a hold of some forbidden treat. Once she managed to get into my husband's backpack and find chocolate. Yes, we knew chocolate is toxic to dogs. She didn't care. Here was a grown man in a headlock with a pug on the floor wrestling Crocodile Dundee style.She didn't go down without a fight.

Here's a little storyboard about a fictitious pug creature I made for my creature design class when I was working toward my MFA. We had to take a dog, species canus, and blend it with an entirely different species into a creature we imagined. Then we had to write about it.

Canus = pug in my mind. Now and forever.

Illustrations © Johanna Westerman, 2016