Man vs. Pugs

My dogs have been plotting against me for a couple of years now. Let me start by saying they are the two cutest dogs in the world, and if I were to have my soul sucked out while I sleep in the middle of the night, I’d want it to be by them.

Allow me to introduce my dogs. We adopted both of them from an organization called Pug Hearts. It’s a fantastic group that saves pugs and puts them up for adoption. These dogs come from all sorts of unfortunate backgrounds. Quite a few have been abused in some heinous ways, and others have suffered from neglect. I don’t want to give you too much of a sob story here, but luckily, Sampson was a puppy when we adopted him and didn’t suffer too many hardships. Earl, on the other hand, had a broken leg and heartworms before we adopted him. He wasn’t too fond of people as you might suspect.

 As you can tell, I’m an animal lover and to a fault at that. I pick up cockroaches in napkins and put them outside. I would never hunt or fish. I used to tell my friends that if I had a man in one corner with a knife coming to kill me because he was a serial killer and a wolf in the other corner coming to maul me and I had a gun, I’d no question kill the man. I’d obviously never kill anything or anyone, but you get the point.

Back to the point, don’t feel bad for my dogs because you shouldn’t. These dogs might as well be kings. They run our lives. We give them everything and they live a very cushy, envy-inspiring life. We have a painting of Sampson in our house, for God’s sake!

Here is Sampson. He is a cutie pie but not really a pug. He’s taut and tall.

Here is Earl. He’s more of a traditional pug. He’s kind of chubby and is the clown of the dog world.

Now you feel sorry for them and know how cute they are. Here’s the deal: they are plotting against me. I am the alpha dog, and they know it. I put them on their backs constantly and feed them. They know what’s up. I’m the president; Sampson is the vice president; Earl is the secretary of state; my wife is the working class (Ha ha, just joking).

Sampson is neurotic and becomes obsessive about toys or other things that might be under the couch. He’ll stand by the couch and paw at the upholstery (yeah! Got that word after four tries). The other day Sampson was pawing at the couch. I was watching Pardon the Interruption.

Tony Kornheiser: Tim Tebow can’t…

Sampson: scratch, scratch, scratch

Michael Wilbon: Yeah, but he’s the golden…

Sampson: Scratch, scratch, scratch….

Me: Ok! You win! Geez.

I have to lay flat on my tummy to look under the couch because I’m too big to just squat down. As I’m looking under the couch, I see there is nothing there. As soon as I notice this, I feel a little doggy arm overlap my arm. I look over and Sampson’s face is 3 inches from mine. I feel another little doggy arm touch my other arm, and I look over. Earl is 3 inches from my face. He sneezes. He gets doggy snot all up in my grill. They planned this. They knew how to get me on their level, and they took it to me. They’re starting the coup by humiliating me.

I’m a tad worried. We’ve been leaving them out during the day and trying to get away from kennel training. I suspect they are planning.

Sampson: When the fat one gets home, he’ll eat something.

Earl: Yeah, something we can’t have.

Sampson: Yeah.

Sampson: We need to let him know he can’t just sit around here spending all the time with the working class (read above!) and eating all the cheesecake.

Earl: Yeah, I want some cheesecake, too.

Dogs: Whispering…

One of them poops on the floor while laughing egomaniacally.

This is a growing concern in my household. Growing. Like a tree!

 (Evil looking, huh?)

(There is much more on this and I’ll address it later. This is just a taste of their monkeyshines.)