A serious post by mom

Life is too short to be hateful. 

Period. 

Be angry, get frustrated, but never be hateful. 

In 2004, my only aunt passed away from pancreatic cancer. She was 52. She never smoked or drank. She ate healthy food and exercised. She wore sunscreen. She beat breast cancer 7 years before. She spent years of her life helping Jewish people from across Europe move to Israel through Bridges for Peace. She married young, had two kids and didn't finish college. She taught herself Greek and Hebrew so that she could read the Bible in the original text. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't perfect, but she was doing the best she could to make the world a better place. She told me once to live life with no regrets. That wasn't an instruction to do whatever I wanted. It meant that I should think about what I do, make sure I wouldn't regret it in the future.

That year, I learned a really hard lesson. As good as you are as human or as mindful as you are of your health, it does not guarantee you anything. You don't get a pass from cancer no matter how many cheeseburgers you pass up. 

The lesson I learned was that life was too short for anything that does not make the world a better place.  If I die tomorrow, I want to leave the world better than I found it. I want the last impression that people have of me is that I had a positive impact on the world around me. I want to look back on my life and say that I don't regret the choices I made. The big ones or the little ones. 

 Now, I'm not finding the cure for cancer, but I'm trying to be the best person I can be. 

And we all can do it. I'm willing to bet that everyone who reads this has donated to a charity or spent time volunteering. If you're like me, you can't donate thousands of dollars to charity. I have a job to pay the bills so I can't devote all my time to volunteering either. 

But we have the power to 

MAKE THE WORLD BETTER, 

simply by being kind and compassionate and nice. We also have the power to really ruin someone's day by being hateful and cruel. It's so easy now to spread spite through the internet because you don't have to look the person in the eye. I am trying to be better than that. We all can. 

I think it's okay to get mad at stuff. Traffic makes me want to use HBO words and I don't curse. But I don't let it ruin my day. I don't let it upset me when I can't do anything about it. The sequester? The fact that 12,000 people in my town alone will lose their jobs, including people I know, people who have pugs and kids and mortgages? I can't wave a magic wand to fix Washington. Does it upset me? Absolutely. So I focus on what I can do. I can make sure that my friends know that I'm here to help as much as I can. I can drop off casseroles and dog food and help with resumes and job searches. I can focus on the good I can do instead of the bad in the world.

The world can be a really terrible place outside of human influence. Hurricanes wipe entire towns away. Diseases kill people. Then humans can turn around and make things even worse. And we don't have to. We have the choice to do something regretful or something wonderful.

Our dogs think we are the greatest people in the world. When Petunia jumps in my lap, snuggles her head on my chest and sighs sweetly, I know that she is happy and content and wouldn't be anywhere else on the planet. Tallulah, Petunia and Isabelle know that I give them the best life I can and love me no matter what. Even when I have a bad day at work and come home grumpy (because I'm not perfect), they are so glad that I'm home. I'm smothered in pug kisses and knocked over by curly tails wagging. My pugs inspire me to be a better person every day. 

Let's all be the person our pugs think we are. When something makes you mad, get mad but then put it in perspective. Is it worth making your blood pressure skyrocket? Are there more important things you could be doing, like hugging your pug? When hate comes knocking on your door, ignore it. It will go away. Don't respond to meanness with more meanness. It is a never ending cycle that only drags you down to the meanie's level. You decide how you react to a nasty comment. Decide to be the better person. Don't say something you will regret later. You will sleep better and be happier. Trust me.

Please. 

Odds and ends

So, we are gaining weight. Yay! Tallulah is not gaining like she should, given the amount of food she's been eating so we still have work to do. But it's an improvement and we'll take it. We are certainly enjoying the extra food.

Are any of you other pug people obsessively checking the 1000 Pugs galleries? Mom checks way too much, but they are so incredible! Amanda has captured these pugs' personalities so beautifully. As of this post, the Dallas, Miami (South Florida) and Atlanta galleries are filling up. And they are unbelievable. March 11, our gallery launch date, is so far away, but with photos like we've seen already, they are going to be amazing. We can't wait for the book! 

It seems like the raccoons have permanently vacated, at least for now. Thank pug! 

And because every post needs adorable pug pictures, here you go. 

Two pugs, one lap

Isabelle, pondering life 

Update on the neighbors and us

Well, the raccoons seem to have moved on. We haven't seen or heard them since Thursday. Which is awesome. Mom did grease the gutter and the side of the house, but that only seemed to slow them down. 

What did seem to make an impact was the garden hose. Mom spent a long time squirting the little ones with the hose and when they ran inside the chimney (not in use), she squirted water in the chimney. There was also a lot of spotlighting and pine cone throwing and general harassment courtesy of mom. Whatever the reason, it seemed to have worked. Now, let's hope it sticks!

FYI, if you have ever have raccoons in your yard, do everything you can to make them leave. They can carry a really nasty parasite called raccoon roundworm in their poop. There is no real effective treatment and people can catch it too. This is really a terrible thing to have and the best thing to do is prevent it. So kick their butts out! 

In other news, we were supposed to have our dentals on Monday. However, we had both lost so much weight that the vet recommended that we not go under anesthesia. 

Mom knew that we had been losing weight, just didn't realize how much. Unfortunately, Petunia has lost 3 pounds and Tallulah 2. Not good. We had our blood tested including thyroid levels and our poop screened for parasites. Poop tests were clear. Tallulah's blood work was good except her calcium was a little low. Petunia's thyroid was very high. 

The good news is that we don't have the raccoon parasite. The bad news is that we don't have a real reason for Tallulah to lose that much weight. The best news is that we get to eat double our food! 

The plan is to eat twice our normal food and get weighed again in a week. If we are gaining weight, great. If not, more tests. Petunia's thyroid medication has been reduced and she'll get retested in a month. Tallulah's been having a poop issue for months now so that might be the reason. And their food restriction of fish and potatoes could explain the low calcium. It might also somewhat explain the weight loss although Isabelle hasn't lost weight. 

So we'll just eat as much as we can and hope for the best. 

Upstairs neighbors :/

Mom was making a pair of pugjamas for the winner of the Pug Rescue of San Diego's Facebook auction the other night when we heard a noise outside. It sounded like tree branches scraping the aluminum siding. 

Only the wind wasn't blowing really hard and the tree outside the window wasn't moving. 

So we go outside and what do we see? 

That is one big raccoon. She probably weighs as much as all three of us put together!

Mom kept pointing the flashlight at the raccoon and telling her to get down. She kept checking and eventually it was gone that night. 

We were oblivious, thankfully. Didn't even look up!

Well, today we were outside doing our morning business and mom happened to look up. 

 Not one, but two! And these look like kids. Not sure where mom was. 

To give a little perspective, the window you see in the bottom picture is on the second floor of the house. The attic is tall enough to be a third floor. When our contractors work on the roof, they have to bring a special ladder to get up there, it's so tall. 

The chimney you see covers our furnace exhaust so hopefully the critters aren't trying to crawl into our furnace. That would be bad. However, there's a rain cap that's been pushed to the side up there, so it's possible. Our contractor is coming up with a plan to A) check and repair any damage these upstairs neighbors may have done and B) find a way to encourage these guys to move on as humanely as possible. If possible, we are just going to evict them and keep them from making themselves at home up there. If we have to, we'll have a wildlife trapper come and relocate them. Mom is thinking of greasing the gutter pipe that they are using to climb. 

Not sure if that will work or not, but anyone else have a better idea?

We live in a city, for Pete's sake! 

These raccoons need to find a home in a place with no cars and no pugs one third of their size. 

Although raccoon poop might be pretty tasty. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tallulah Grumpy Pants and Petunia Happy Face

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

Seriously, don't hate. 

Southern "Fried", not Southern "Frozen"!

So we're trying a new thing here in the Southern Fried household. 

Mom decided to put our breakfast into kongs and freeze them so we'd have to expend a little more effort in eating. 

You know, instead of inhaling our food in mere seconds.

The theory is that by working harder to get our food, we'd be less nutso when she got home from work.  And it would make us work our brains a little. Back when we were puppies and ate kibble, she used Amazaballs to slow us down and it worked great. 

So, today we started. 

Petunia

Tallulah

It did not go as planned. 

Oh, we started right in on them before mom left for work. But at the end of the day, only one pug had finished her kong. Licked it completely clean. And it wasn't the pug that mom thought it would be. 

It was Petunia!

Tallulah is the pug who will eat anything, anytime, anywhere. Remember the time she ate most of a bag of Isabelle's joint supplement? Remember the time she ate an entire peach, pit and all? And the poop? Mom figured that Tallulah would work that kong until every last bit of quinoa and fish was gone. 

Nope. She left most of it in the kong, even though it was thawed out by the time mom got home. 

We're trying it again tomorrow since the kongs are already loaded and frozen. If Tallulah doesn't figure it out, we have a plan B. Mom will put the food in a regular bowl and freeze it into a patty that way. Tallulah chomps and gobbles, so it has to be frozen to the bottom of the bowl. 

Hopefully something will work.

Really, mom should have known that Petunia would lick that kong. 

Just check her out eating Frosty Paws!

Wordless Wednesday-Teenage Mutant Ninja Pug edition