The General Situation

Bunnyfrog

Howard the Pug

Howard isn't doing especially well, and the surgery was possibly a mistake, because he appears to have a degenerative condition rather than a spinal compression. We're committed to making his life as pleasant as possible, and the good news is that he's not in any evident pain. Give him food and a lap, and he's pretty content.

Most likely, he'll lose the use of his rear legs first. He's been prone to dragging his back paws ever since the surgery, so we make him wear those rubber booties that protect dogs from snow salt. We tried dog shoes and baby socks, but both fell right off. He looks very cute in the booties, and he gets all kind of attention as a result, which is not always great, since he hates most strangers. I take him to the water treadmill once a week, because he'll lift his paws while in the water. He'll also do it on sand, so in California he gets a walk on the beach every morning. If we time it right, we run into the guy who has four pugs.

We also do physical therapy at home. One exercise is what the vet called "noxious stimuli"—great name for a band!—which involves bothering his back paws so much that he's forced to engage them. He lies on his back, in my lap, while I stick my finger in between his pads over and over, wiggling it around until he kicks it away. He doesn't like it, and he finishes each session by taking out his aggression on a toy, but he doesn't really struggle to get away. Today was an exception: I assumed he was just being ornery, but it turns out that he had to barf, which he did while lying on his back, in my lap. I watched the barf come up and go right back down. Howard, meanwhile, appeared pleased with the efficiency.

Relief walks have grown tougher because he keeps walking as he poops—no, he always did that, but now he positively races. You'd better have the bag ready when he drops into the running squat: He often walks ten yards or more before doubling back. Yesterday, I was walking him in City Hall Park, when I overheard one possibly homeless man tell a definitely homeless man that he shouldn't play with his penis while kids are around. We were near the end of the walk, and I had wrongly assumed Howard wasn't going to deliver the goods, so I was not at all prepared with the bag. I missed the first two and was trying to get on pace while looking over my shoulder and yelling at people to watch out for the poop when a blind man headed right toward it, forcing me to yell even louder. That's when the penis-player starting yelling nonsensically and throwing a garbage can lid all around the park. Everyone headed for the exit, which was on the far side of the poop minefield.

Preparing for the future, we've attempted carrying him in a BabyBjörn–like contraption, but we worried it put more strain on his back. And we've bought a set of wheels that can one day support his back half. I have yet to venture outside with my two-wheeled pug, but Adam has done it. He had read beforehand that passersby might take offense, believing that you're somehow harming the pug and/or unnecessarily prolonging an unhappy life. It sounds absurd, but sure enough, some guy threatened to call the police.

I dare someone to try that with me.

Howard the Pug

Then Again....

That's My Shirt

Howard the Pug

Aquapug!

Howard the Pug

Howard's Surgery

Howard had to have a compression in his spine fixed, which entailed surgery, as you might guess from the photo above. Adam and I were faced with an awful choice: Proceed with the surgery, in the best-case hope that it stops the progression (which, if it continued, would otherwise end with paralysis of his back legs), or keep waiting in the hope that the progression doesn't get worse (but any worsening is not reversible). You start to wonder if you're imagining things, but he looked increasingly bad to us, so we scheduled the surgery for the first week of December.

I trust the surgeon, a neurologist at a specialty-care facility in Hell's Kitchen, but I no longer like him. After I dropped Howard off at 9 a.m. on the day of the surgery, he called me at 1 p.m.—when he was supposed to be operating on the little bugger—to say that an emergency case had come in, and he didn't want to operate on Howard at the end of what was sure to be a very long day. So I could come get him and have him spend one more night at home, or he could board there ("for free"—you think?). Obviously I went back uptown. What he neglected to mention was that Howard had already been heavily sedated. The technician said he'd be fine in a few hours, but he was still wildly zonked when we went to bed at 10 p.m. I don't think it was a pleasant high—he kept looking at us like we were goats, or maybe fish. (That's when this photo was taken; he had plopped down in a spot where he normally pees.)

Before the surgery: "He'll be able to walk by the time he leaves the hospital, in three to five days."

Right after the surgery: "It went well. We were able to relieve the compression."

Two days later: "Of course, it could be four weeks before he can walk."

I felt terrible for Howard—and still do—but he's a dog. Give him food and a lap, and he's pretty happy. Even if he never really regains the ability to walk well, it's not as if he has ever been a particularly active creature.

If we're going to be honest, I felt worse for myself. Five days after the surgery, Adam had to go to Brazil for five days. The surgeon had also not explained that Howard would be on prednisone, an anti-inflammatory steroid that does not at all agree with him (Howard, not the doctor). It makes him aggressive, and, far more debilitating to me, he has to drink a lot of water as a result of the drug. Sometimes he can make it three hours before having to pee, sometimes not. Such as the time I was administering his physical therapy—more on that in a minute—and he started to pant. Sensing we had entered the red zone, I hoisted him up, ran to the front door, and set him down for two seconds while I put on my coat—in which time he peed a bucketful all over our good carpet. (That's the carpet that less resembles a wee-wee pad, meaning that when Howard has to barf or worse, he tends to go to the other, lighter carpet.) I spent half an hour sopping up the pee with paper towels, soaking the spot with Nature's Miracle, and then sopping that up. I may have cried.

When you have to get up at 2 a.m. and walk outside every night, you can't even turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism, at least not in earnest.

Howard isn't supposed to use his back legs, so we were told we could buy a sling that would go under his waist when we needed to walk him. Instead, we improvised with an old belt that was in our giveaway bag. Because the belt isn't very long, the person walking him—that would be me—has to hunch way over, following him around the park across the street as he does his business. (To feel less bad about breaking the park's no-dogs rule, I refused to enter the lawn anywhere near the "No dogs allowed" sign; "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucauld said.) I'm sure folks watching thought I was some sort of idiot, totally clueless about how those things called leashes are supposed to work, but I was so fried out I didn't even care. Howard, doing his best not to be accommodating, soon shifted his defacatory pattern to include what I came to think of as the "2 a.m. special." He likes to walk as he poops; because the belt is short, I had to move along with him—and then return, pug under one arm, searching out the nuggets with the flashlight app on my phone. Pride took a holiday.

(Once he was back from Brazil, Adam stole a yoga strap from the gym to use instead of the belt. It's much longer, so you can put the leash around Howard's neck and the strap around his waist, like a pug marionette. It works much better, until you need a free hand to pick up the poop. Adam was planning on returning the strap, but if the condition of the belt is any indication, I think Equinox would prefer to absorb the loss.)

For all that, the physical therapy came closer to pushing me over the edge. Doing anything four times a day, except eating, is a lot. We have to make 15 bike-pedaling rotations with each rear leg; do fifty "bounces" of his rear end and legs; and spend four to six minutes massaging his back legs. (The massage includes a "warm up" and "cool down" of stroking the leg ten times. They must not realize that Howard is predisposed to be ready for a massage at any time—and no amount of cool down is going to make him OK with it being over.) For the bike-pedaling rotations, you brace his undercarriage with your arm; best to do it before the walk, but far enough in advance that you don't make him have to pee. It's work for both of us: He resists the pedaling, stiffening his leg and staring straight ahead as if he's thinking of England, while you get an intense, Pilates-like workout on your arm. I was literally sweating from the exertion.

Happily, it has seemed to help, or at least not hurt—he has possibly been healing on his own. We're still not allowed to let him walk, and it may be weeks till we can, and his left leg is pretty flopsy—but knowing Howard, he could simply be too lazy to use it.

This Is Your Pug on Drugs