Monday, July 06, 2009
Pugaholics: Pug lovers share common bond
Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Gibson prepares meals for her pugs, who have different dietary and medical needs, as Maddie (tan) and Joey, her foster pug, wait in the kitchen.
Guiseppe cools off in a pool while Ceily, another pug, plays nearby.
Jenny Hazlett, 28, of Fairlawn, and Guiseppe, a foster pug, relax on a Saturday evening.
Prentice Murphy feeds a crowd of eager pugs. Her daughter, Pamela Gibson, who has four pugs and a Pekingese, brings her to meetings.
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Pamela Gibson wears her love for pugs on her sleeve.
She also wears it on her personalized license plate (PUGRSQ), magnetic bumper sticker (I LOVE PUGS) and ceramic lawn ornaments so lifelike an animal control officer once slowed down to see if she had unattended dogs on her front porch.
Gibson, a 43-year-old medical transcriptionist, calls herself a "pugaholic."
Three pugs, along with a 13-year-old Pekingese named Otis -- "a hippie pug"-- and Nico, a 14-year-old cat, share Gibson's cottage home in Roanoke, which also serves as a halfway house for rescued pugs seeking permanent digs with new families.
On a recent sunny morning, five squat dogs, grunting and snorting in anxious delight, circled around Gibson, waiting for their morning walks and their beloved breakfast.
But for these pugs -- a breed with certain health concerns -- it's not just a matter of dumping food in bowls.
The dishes are carefully prepared for each pooch's specific nutritional needs. On the kitchen walls, Gibson keeps calendars to track all the dogs' dietary needs and medications: drops for Millie's eyes, joint supplements for Maddie, medication for Otis' inflamed bowel. Gibson charts each one as carefully as a nurse would for patients in a critical care unit.
When the food dishes are set on their place mats, the dogs dive in. The house goes quiet but for snarly gulps.
After the emptied dishes are cleared, each dog's face gets cleaned with a baby wipe to prevent infections in the breed's trademark wrinkles. Chapstick is applied to noses to keep them moist.
Caring for her dogs takes most of Gibson's free time, a sacrifice she said she makes without regret. Pugs pay her back, she said, in unconditional affection.
"They are playful, clownlike," she said. "I love the snores and snorts and wrinkly faces and curly tails."
Plenty need rescuing
Gibson is part of the all-volunteer Mid-Atlantic Pug Rescue, a nonprofit group based in North Carolina that rescues and re-homes abandoned and surrendered pugs.
The popularity of the breed -- and their proliferation in puppy mills -- causes no shortage of pugs in need of homes, according to Melinda Morris of Roanoke, the rescue's foster coordinator for Southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee.
"I'd love it if all people would adopt and not buy," she said.
Morris said people need to understand the nature of the breed before they add a pug to their home. Pugs can make great pets, but they think of themselves as members, if not the star, of the family.
"They just love people and want to be with you all the time. They are a big dog in a small dog's body," Morris said.
But the physical traits that attract people to the breed can also be problematic. Gibson recounted a number of health concerns for pugs, including respiratory problems caused by their pushed-in snouts, skin problems, ulcers and lacerations on their bulging eyes.
It's not uncommon, Morris said, for a pug's eye to come out of the socket, an injury that often cannot be repaired.
Bundles of energy
Pug lovers affiliated with the rescue get together at monthly meetings for social time.
At May's meeting, 15 pugs galloped around the backyard of Casey and Peter Wills, who share their Roanoke home with pug Heidi and Boston terrier/pug mix Dublin.
Video: Roanoke Valley 'pugaholics' love their pugs
Video by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
"There is just so much personality in their eyes," Peter Wills said of his pair of pooches. He and his wife enjoy the camaraderie with other pug lovers. "Pug people have a mentality that we treat our dogs like kids."
Jenny Hazlett and Tina Paugh drive from their Fairlawn home to attend most meetings with their pug Molly and their pug/boxer mix Stan, a dog they adopted through the rescue.
"We found Stan at a pug meet-up and couldn't live without him," Hazlett said.
As she stretched out in a hammock, Hazlett was covered with frolicking pugs, bounding over her, cuddling and giving slurpy kisses.
"I'm like the Pug Whisperer," she laughed. She left that hammock smiling, covered in tiny scratches, pug hair and slobber.
Morris said she could use more volunteers like the Willses, Hazlett, Paugh, and Gibson, who help her transport pugs from regional shelters and pounds to foster and adoptive homes.
Joey, a tall, black pug found as a stray near Johnson City, Tenn., was saved from euthanasia in a shelter when the rescue took him. He is the latest foster to live in Gibson's home. Compared to other pugs she has fostered, Gibson said Joey is in relatively good shape. He has food allergies and a skin condition that requires Benadryl and a special shampoo.
Joey has a huge personality for a little dog. Eager to play and seemingly in need of constant attention, he will need a family that can keep up with his energy.
"He deserves a home," Gibson said. "He just needs someone to work with him."
As bittersweet as it is to let go of her fosters, Gibson remains a realist. She knows she can't keep them all.
"Even if you can financially take in more dogs, you can't give them all the attention they need," she said. "They all deserve homes so they can have the wonderful life they should have had all along."
