Puddles and Wet Socks

Towards the end of his life, Rex would pee in the house at, what felt like, any opportunity. It started when he was, maybe, eight. Just once every month or two. One of us would end up with a wet sock, Dad would reprimand Rex, and he would be sent to his crate to ponder what he had done.

Not much ran through that little pug brain of his, so, even if you ignore the fact that positive reinforcement for peeing outside would have been the way to go, this method did not work. Walks became more frequent, but over the years it got worse and worse. Stepping in puddles became the new norm, and I vividly recall the sudden feeling of warmth slowly spreading across my lap when we were relaxing on the couch one day. Eventually, we discovered that incontinence might as well be a breed standard.

As far as pugs go, Rex was actually pretty healthy. He did snore when he was awake but never had any serious breathing problems, he never ended up with hind end weakness, he stayed within a healthy weight range, and he managed to keep both of his eyes for his whole life (yes, that is a legitimate problem pugs have). On a cool day, we could take Rex on a hike and he could drag us up and down the whole mountain. He would sprint laps around us at the beach, tongue flying in the wind, not holding back one ounce of energy. He was always adventure ready and strangers were always shocked to see a pug along for the adventure.

While he was empty headed, Rex was incredibly food motivated. So, the same dog that barked at the cartoon cars in the movie Cars, also knew how to ring a bell with his paw on command. He would only roll over or play dead on carpeted floors, never the hardwood. He could jump through a hoop, bow, tell you which of your closed hands secretly concealed a treat, and he was proficient in almost all of the basics.

His “leave it” was always one that needed work. Place a treat on the floor and tell him “leave it”, and the treat would stay in its place until you said “good”. Drop anything that seemed vaguely edible, however, and it was gone in seconds no matter what you said. The choice was often to risk losing your hand to the deadly bite of a pug, or allow him to eat whatever he had managed to get ahold of. I kept a laundry list of all the things we could not get away from him in time: a pen cap, a peach pit, a fun size Hershey's bar with the wrapper still on, one fourth of the outside of a cantaloupe, and a dead bird. Given, we only found out about the bird based on the horrific crime scene in the aftermath. Mild comfort can be taken in the fact that the list of things we did successfully get out of those jaws of death is far longer.

I spent one summer in highschool shadowing a veterinarian and had the pleasure of watching a surgery performed on a labrador that had a tiny little stick lodged in his intestines. This dog was only one year old and had already had three major surgeries to remove foreign objects from his digestive tract, and yet somehow our little pug passed everything fine through that iron stomach of his.

Rex joined our family when I was six and held on through my second year of college. He was still dragging us on hikes well into his final year with the family. Pugs are not necessarily a breed I will ever end up with again, largely because I am strongly in favor of adopting and they just don’t end up in shelters often, and partly because of the breed’s many genetic problems. However, for all of his faults, Rex was the best little dog. He was a couch potato when you needed a couch potato and he was ready for a run when you needed a running buddy. It’s funny to look back and think about how all the naughty things he got up to are now fond memories that my family jokes about. Anger fades quickly when you're remembering a friend. Barking up a storm, biting me, chewing our wooden door and chairs, eating things he shouldn’t, and peeing everywhere, all go into the good memory column for me, and today I would gladly step in a puddle to see that goofy little face again.