Lazy Days or Daisy Lays...

Late in the afternoon, our little white mixed Pug dog is standing in her crate making the whining sound in her throat that causes folks as far away as Alabama to call her "pig-dog". It's an irritating whining that gets chopped off midway. And, I guess it does somewhat sound like a pig. More than somewhat. Okay, it sounds just like oinking. I tell her to hush and she snorts and turns around on her bedding, then plops down with a sigh. If she's not disturbed, pretty soon she'll start doing her buzz-saw imitation.

She's a white dog, with short hair that seems eternally to be shedding. Her tail curls round and she has big brown eyes that are sort of popped but still very doe-like. She would look more like a standard Pug if she had the bashed in nose of the breed. The lady who sold her to us called her a "Belgian Pug". If you look up Belgian Pug on a search engine, you get back Pug-dog clubs in Belgium. There doesn't appear to be an actual Belgian Pug breed recognized by the A. K. C.

Okay, the seller had a Dachshund in her household as well as several Pugs and apparently had introduced the two breeds together in hopes of getting a dog that had more of a nose than a Pug does. She believed it was healthier for a dog to have even a little length of nose to breathe with. She succeeded on getting that conformation when this pup was born. Daisy has a short snout and a lower jaw that juts out slightly. Head on she is more Pug-like than when she turns sideways although she doesn't have the side jowls of the breed. She was the runt of the litter and her brothers and sisters were sold before we got there. So, we took this little puppy for Elder Daughter. Now, Elder Daughter and her husband were living in Orlando at the time and when we gave them the pup they already had a young black colored male Pug in the household. They would have kept Daisy but for the fact that she was so young and her teeth were so sharp. And she went after the male dog with those little needle teeth, nipping him in his most vulnerable spot. Elder Daughter sorrowfully told us they couldn't keep the white Belgian Pug because they might want to breed the black one and if Daisy kept up her attacks they were afraid she'd damage that prospect. We accepted the puppy back and have had her ever since.

She's a good alarm when strangers pull into the yard but she tends to be more bark than bite. Fact is, when she is startled - she falls over sideways and froths at the mouth. She's good company for T. when he goes out picking up pecans and will stay close by while he jabs the picker at the nuts and shakes them into his plastic bag. She knows she'll be rewarded with a nut or two when they get back to the house. She loves to chase rabbits who wander up close to the house. She heads after them full tilt and when they squeeze through the fence she takes her time sniffing the grass where they disappeared. We keep pans in the yard to water the various birds that come to dine on our scattered seeds. Daisy runs to those pans and drinks from the bird water as often as we let her. I think she believes it's a lightly seasoned soup provided by the management. She sleeps in the family room beside the piano and snores loud enough to be heard in the living room, right through the wall of the house. She's been with us about 12 years now. I think Pugs are not so long lived as she. Maybe the lady who bred her had the right idea about that little bit of snout being better for doggie health - if she had only warned us that Belgian Pugs snore so loudly!