If you've owned a pug, you will understand completely...they are not your average dog-type, no way! My pug, Sachin, changed my life, he was my life and since he passed, my life has a big part of it missing, and I will never get over it.
My pug Sachin, bless his little soul, had though, the biggest heart. So, I'll start from the beginning....I met Sachin in a pet shop window while at lunch one day, nearly fourteen years ago. I was just about to turn 30, and being the career type, I had no children, and couldn't see that in the near future. I simply loved animals, must have been from way back when I was little, my dad was a police dog handler and we had a lovely police dog named Glen...from then on I adored animals.
Anyway, as I stared through this Pet Shop window, at these "alien-looking, cutest ever" baby pugs, about 9 or 10 pups with the fattest little bellies, and all snoring in a snuggled up bunch, up pops the cutest of them all, and once he opened his big wide eyes, he instantly spotted me, his new mum, and immediately started straddling and stomping across all his sleeping siblings, clumsily and quickly, but they just all gurgled and moved slightly. And there he was, the most precious and adorable little puppy I had ever seen, (and would ever see!). He was about 6 weeks old then. He definitely owned me from that moment on.
As my 30th birthday was approaching I went home daily and moaned like a spoilt girl to my boyfriend at the time, saying, I just have to have this little puppy, I don't know what it is but I cannot stress to you how important it is that you must get him for me for my 30th, I don't want anything else in the whole world - and I want your word you will promise to get him for me etc....I couldn't stand the thought of him going to another home, he had already picked me out and I him!
Well, he did manage to surprise me with him, catching me off guard sometime after my 30th, it was actually the day of my best friends mums memorial of her death, she had died in a car accident 5 years before to that day, and so I was very distracted with that. Mid afternoon I got a call at work from my boyfriend, saying I had to come home, and quickly as he had hurt himself at the gym and was in a lot of pain. I said "what have you done?", and he bumbled something about, I have hurt my leg, you must come home now, I need you to, okay". Luckily I worked only 10 minutes from home, so off I went, grieving girlfriend in tow - didn't have time to think it might be a put-on. All of a sudden, I'm at home, I walk inside the first thing I notice, my boyfriend is in a pair of jeans, "how can he hurt his leg and manage to get changed into jeans?" was my first thought! But then he tried to put on the pain and went "oh, ah etc..." as he clung onto the sweatshirt that was clumped up in his lap, and all of a sudden, he lifts up his sweatshirt and there he is, my little baby pug, my darling, Sachin, sitting on his lap with those big eyes, and a big red bow around his neck, all excited, as if he had played along in this quite knowingly!
I melted, and still do every day when I think of that moment......and that cutest little pink tongue of his (which was to become his trademark feature), always prominently stuck out at those people who used to glance at him, then stopped abruptly and gooed either "oh my god he is the cutest little dog" (as the girls said) or "good god what the hell is that???" (is what the guys said), but either way, he made BIG impressions wherever he went.
