Think your pugs are doomed to be perpetual couch potatoes and lazy lap-lovers? Meet Sue and her band of jogging pugs (okay, not Pisces, because she's 13 and deserves to be chill)! Sue is our first New Zealander, but since she lives in the States now, her pugs are American citizens; still, grab your togs, jandals, and chilly box, we're going to take you tramping through Sue's world, eh? Chur!
PP: Sue, it's pretty unusual to have pugs that run 10Ks, how did this come about?
Sue: Mr. Wiggles is a rescue, a frenchie pug mix, but only about 25% frenchie. Whoever had him before crated him a lot, so he had a ton of energy when we got him and we were like what do we do? I said I’d take him for a jog.
PP: And the rest is history.
Sue: Yep. We do a lot of local races.
PP: Just Mr. Wiggles?
Sue: Oh no, Libra runs, too. She can run five to six miles with no problem.
PP: Wow! That’s remarkable for a pug.
Sue: When they see us get dressed for a run, they get so pumped. Mr. Wiggles likes our Wednesday night running group in particular. That’s the beer group.
PP: Our kind of pug runner.
Sue: But we can’t run them at the same time, because Libra will only run with me and if Mr. Wiggles sees us running together, he’ll chase us and drag my husband, because he can’t focus on anything but Libra.
PP: Sounds like someone has a crush.
Sue: Yeah, Mr. Wiggles and Libra love each other. But Libra doesn’t like anybody else.
PP: No one? Not even Pisces?
Sue: To be honest, Libra's a mean girl.
PP: That’s so not like a Libra.
Sue: Yeah, I know! But then she’s really cute, so she uses that to manipulate people
PP (Shari): Now that’s like a Libra. I’m a Libra, so I can say that.
Sue: (laughs) Yeah, she works it.
PP: So, Sue, you’re obviously a Pug Person, how did that come about?
Sue: My husband and I decided when we bought a house we would get a pug, I don’t know why, it just had to be a pug. I found a local pug rescue and we adopted Bamboo, who was kind of an alpha, so we thought we’d get her a puppy to loosen her up. So we got Pisces. And she was sooo much work, I decided no more puppies.
PP: Having a puppy at the moment, we can relate.
Sue: And then I fostered for the rescue, which was not a good idea, because I was a double foster fail, Humperdinck and Cordelia.
PP: Oh, Sue.
Sue: I know, I know. And when we decided to foster Mr. Wiggles, I wasn’t going to keep him at first because he’s huge and I like small, compact pugs, but Humperdinck went to the ER that same day and didn’t make it. So, my husband was like “Yay, we get to keep Mr. Wiggles!”
PP: Did he come with that name?
Sue: Yes, because he was so hyper. And Cordelia passed too and I was so sad, because she was my special girl. I wanted another black pug just like Cordelia, she was so sweet, I’d take her to the office with me. I work in HR, so people would cry and cuddle her—
PP: While you were firing them?
Sue: Yeah, or just general job woes (laughs). It was hard to find a black pug through the rescues, so I found Libra on Craigs List. The lady was rehoming her because she said Libra was attacking her grandkids.
PP: Oh, no!
Sue: Libra acted all timid and shy when I met her and Pisces seemed to like her, but quickly I found out she was kind of nasty. We went to training because she tried to bite some kids in the dog park—
PP: Libra! Girlfriend!
Sue: I know, but she’s gotten a lot better. No longer attacking random children.
PP: Still. The polar opposite of Cordelia.
Sue: Totally. At least she’s close to Mr. Wiggles. And Pisces is the third wheel. Super sweet and non-running.
PP: Boy, you are really a Pug Person, Sue. You’ve had six, with a mean girl, plus fosters?
Sue: I’m like a pug hoarder.
PP: Do they sleep with you?
Sue: Of course.
PP: All of them? Do they ever fight in the bed?
Sue: No, they’re good with sleeping. I have to move Mr. Wiggles away sometimes, because he’s so big. He’s thirty pounds.
PP: Jeez. That’s a whole lotta pug.
Sue: But he thinks he’s the same size as Libra and Pisces.
PP: Libra and Pisces combined, maybe. Sue, if your pugs were celebrities, who would they be?
Sue: Pisces would be Dame Edna. Mr. Wiggles is a ladies man, so maybe Hugh Grant. Or Hugh Hefner. Some Hugh. He used to like Pisces until Libra came along, then he dumped her. And when I fostered a younger girl, he forgot all about Pisces and Libra.
PP: Such a Hef.
Sue: And Libra is Mariah Carey.
PP: Yep, we can see that. Does she hit the high notes too?
Sue: She does! Every day at 2:30 she’ll start crying and keeps crying until I feed her. So dinner got moved back from 5:30 to 5, from 5 to 4:30, from 4:30 to 4, and sometimes I’m in a meeting and I just give in even earlier.
PP: She’s probably wondering how far she can push it. Like, can I get her to give us dinner right after breakfast?
Sue: That’s where we’re headed.
PP: Do you have a favorite memory or story about any of them?
Sue: I took Mr. Wiggles to a 10K and he’s really into passing people, so we were doing eight and a half minute miles, approaching eight-minute miles, which is pretty fast. You could see people’s faces as we blew by them at the finish line, “Oh my God, I got beat by a pug…”
