I think it's the Bailey's. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all our readers! May your day be filled with steak & kidney pie, colcannon, and good Guinness.

(No pugs were inebriated during the taking of this photo.)

It was a great deal of fun! I have to admit, I was playing the worried pug Mommy card a lot - I didn't know how a totally blind pooch would handle being thrown into a room full of people and tables and a gazillion other pugs. I kept her on leash and pretty close for the first ten minutes or so, but then it became clear she just wanted to explore, so I took her off leash and let her go.

She had a blast! She wasn't exactly running full bore like she did at her last pugalug (when she was still sighted) but she wandered around, got lots of pats, sniffed lots of other dogs and was very, very happy - as you can see from the final photo in the series.

For me, I had a blast - both watching Merry have fun and also sitting on the floor and being attacked by half a dozen pugs at any given time. Snorting, sniffling, crazy pug goodness. Sigh. Better than a bubble bath for your troubles.

And yes, in case you were wondering - it did make me want to get Merry a little sister. I miss having a young crazy pug in the house. When you go through those first two years, it's insane and you think you can't wait for them to calm down. But once you've lived with a laid back older pug for a while, you miss the crazies. Or at least, I do. :)

I know this kind of shot is becoming a cliche (gosh knows you can find jillions of them online) but I couldn't resist. She's just too cute.

Also, a few of you asked about her outfit. It's by her all-time (and mine) fave designer, Wooflink. Here's the review of the outfit.

(Do you read Merry's product reviews every month? She reviews 5 new products every single month (367 products reviewed so far!). If you don't, and you'd like to sign up to get the new reviews in your inbox each month, sign up here.)

Drives me nuts. She's cute, but drives me nuts.

Messy? No, she's very good at cleaning up after herself. I'd call it fastidious (goes with the Princess persona) but truth be told she's a pug, which means she's greedy, which means she'd lick our entire floors from one end of the house to the other in hopes of getting just three more crumbs of food. And has done so. We call her our "Swiffer Wet". *laughs*

Thanks to all for your kind comments yesterday. Made me feel a little less "loser-ish" about the whole thing.

Thank you guys, all of you, for sharing suggestions and ideas. I wish I was as good at this as so many of you are, but I clearly froze up and that didn't do the pooch any favors. I will be keeping an eye out going forward to see if I can find the owner again and will keep you all up to date when I do.

So today, I'm walking the princess when I run across another pug. My response - as usual - was to cry "Puggy!" and walk the princess over because, come on, pug lover here. Except this time on closer inspection, the owner wasn't necessarily one I'd have sought out to speak to - slightly glazed eyes, reddened cheeks, and with a stench that I'd normally associate with the homeless. I'm not saying she was, I have no idea. But she had that look. And yet somehow was walking a purebred pug. So who knows.

What I do know is that she was either mentally challenged, drunk, high, or operating with an IQ that wouldn't place her in the category of suitable pet owner, in my opinion. When I asked her how old her dog was she said "a few weeks, I think". The pup was clearly 6-8 months old, going by size - thereabouts. Far from a few weeks, at least. Later she mentioned she'd "just got him so he could be even younger". When I mentioned that he likely hadn't been fixed yet, because he was all over Merry like butter on popcorn, she repeated that story "He probably hasn't been fixed yet, that's why he likes girls" - twelve times - while following along beside us. Like a chant. Or like she was trying to make sense of the words. Finally, she got the sense that I wasn't up to strolling together and began to walk away from us.

She yanked at his collar to pull him in the opposite direction, twice nearly breaking the pup's arm as it was tangled in the leash - he whined, twice, and each time she finally clued and untangled him. I was freaking out inside but had no idea what I could do. I had no proof. I had no NOTHING except someone who seemed high as a kite, who didn't seem to know diddly about her dog or how to care for it, walking around my favorite breed on a leash and all I could do was sit there and watch them walk away and wish to God I was brave enough or legally entitled enough to take him away from her and get him to a shelter or rescue or, hell, my house for now would have looked better than his current situation.

But I didn't do any of those things. Instead I watched him walk away and sniffed back a few tears and took my own, very cherished pug home and gave her extra hugs and tried not to feel like a bad person for letting that poor pooch walk away.

What would you have done?

See it bigger on Flickr.

Despite the photo, the snow *is* melting, and given that it's supposed to be above zero temps right through till at least next Monday, I'm secretly hoping that the snow is on its way out and we can get back to lovely temps and long walks and MORE SUNSHINE! :)

Is it just me? Or is this winter so much worse for lack of sunshine than last?

Have a super-duper weekend folks. I'll be in MUCH better shape personally once I get through month-end! Publishing once a month does tend to back-load your work into the last week of the month!

Afterwards, the princess gets called over to Grandma so mom can wipe her face (and neck, and gosh knows what else) clean of yogurt. Because she's a pug and not the cleanest eater on the planet. Yogurt, mind you, that she wouldn't get all over her if she could delicately lick off a big glob of it from the top of her dish, but what do I know? :) Grandmas know best!

I've heard your requests for Merry puppy photos, and am working on hunting them down. I did not shoot much digitally in those days (nor was I very a good photographer!) but I do have an album of prints I'll try and scan later this week to share a few puppy photos. However, to tide you all over until then, here's one of her taken just a few days after she came home with me (she was four months old). As you can see her little head is only a little bigger than the rope toy at that point! :)