I know I usually have a rather dim view of my upbringing,
but the blog gives me an opportunity to let out some things I don’t normally
say publicly. To give the blog a little more positive beat, I’ve decided to
talk about some of the bright spots of my childhood.
Whenever I see a pug, I always have to laugh. They really
are such funny dogs, their generally jolly personality, the facial expressions
on that wrinkled up face, the short, deep bark that they have (which is rather
unusual for a small dog, most have a high pitch yap of some sort, which I find
highly annoying), and the snorting noises like a pig that they make because of
their nose shape.
I also laugh because it brings back memories of a pug my
family had when I was a kid. My sister is over 9 years older than me, which
means she left home for college in northern Indiana when I was about 9 years old. Before
she left for college, as is typical for high school students in the Midwest , she had to take the ACT test. Because she didn’t
schedule a test date until close to the deadline, she ended up taking it at a
high school in Greenville, Illinois, a town about 50 miles east of our
hometown.
My dad had been thinking about getting a dog for my mom for
a while, and when he went with my sister to the appointment to take the ACT (she
was 17 years old by this time, but as a teen, she could get lost very easily,
she does somewhat better now, but she still isn’t good with directions), he
asked some of the teachers there about animal shelters.
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| Not an actual picture of her, I don't think I have any |
When they came back, he brought back a tan colored pug named
Suki. The shelter had said that she had belonged to a military couple from Scott Air Force Base
here in Southwestern Illinois . The couple had
been transferred elsewhere and couldn’t take her wherever they were going to.
She was already 9 years by this point, but still had some considerable energy
to her. She was used to her former owners taking her for rides in their car,
and for several months, she would run in circles at the front door like she was
chasing her tail as a form of protest when someone would go out the front door
without her.
