Pug problems Archives - Two Pug Tails

Why Your Pug Is Constantly Licking

February 25, 2022 by emilyreviews Leave a Comment

Why Pugs Lick Things

New moms lick their puppies to clean them after birth and to stimulate them to breathe. They also lick their pups to stimulate them to go to the bathroom as new puppies. As puppies get older, they often will lick their mother’s muzzle. It seems to be a bonding behavior for dogs.

In many cases, licking is a way that dogs show affection.

Dogs lick other dogs to show respect, so when your pug licks you, it’s possible that part of the reason why dogs like to lick people could be that they are trying to show you respect.

Of course, dogs also like to lick things simply to taste them! This is why dogs will lick foods, plants or other things that they suspect may taste good to them. Part of the reason why dogs like to lick people is because our skin tastes a bit salty to them.

When a dog is licking themselves, it’s usually to clean themselves. Dogs often lick their nose to clean it, as this can actually increase how well they can smell!

When Pugs Lick Because Something Is Wrong

While licking is a very normal and safe behavior in dogs much of the time, there are times where licking can be a sign of a problem. Here are some of the reasons why pug lick when something is wrong:

Licking releases endorphins for dogs which can soothe their pain. This leads pugs to lick when they are in pain or needing comfort, sometimes.

If pugs are having pain, irritation or itching in an area, they may lick that area in an attempt to soothe it. If you find your dog is suddenly wanting to lick a specific area, have the vet check it out.

If dogs develop hot spots from allergies or similar issues, they’ll often lick that area a lot. If you see your dog licking a particular spot quiet a lot, check the fur and skin in that area to see if there has been any fur loss or if there is any redness or oozing.

“Air licking” or when dogs appear to lick nothing or lick the air, can be something stuck in their mouth (like a hair) or painful teeth. If you notice air licking, check their mouth to see if they have something stuck. If this is a regular behavior, schedule a vet visit to see if it’s time for a dental workup.

Compulsive Licking In Pugs

If your dog doesn’t have a problem with a particular area but is constantly licking it, it may have become a compulsive habit. Sort of like how people can bounce their leg or twist their hair unconsciously. Dogs can sometimes develop the habit of licking just out of a nervous habit or boredom habit.

If severe, licking can lead to medical issues such as hair loss and skin infection. It’s best to try to curb habitual licking early if you can. The way to do this is to resolve the underlying cause. If anxious, try to work on the source of their anxiety or get them treatment for anxiety. If it’s from boredom, find enrichment activities to help them out.

Excessively licking surfaces (like furniture) can be GI related. A study was done that showed that dogs who excessively lick surfaces have nearly a 75% chance of having gastrointestinal trouble. These GI issues varied but included irritable bowel syndrome, delayed gastric emptying, a foreign body in the digestive tract and more.

After the dogs were treated for their GI issue, about half of them stopped the excessive licking behavior!

Source: ScienceDirect.com.

How To Stop Your Pug From Constantly Licking

Block them from the area. When my pug went through a phase of obsessively licking his paws, we would put socks or dog booties on him for small amount of time. We didn’t leave them on 24/7, as his feet needed to breathe. However, just putting the socks or booties on if he was fixated on licking would get him to stop for a while, and then we’d take them off later.

Don’t positively reward it. Sometimes we can accidentally train dogs to do the opposite of what we’d like them to do, by accidentally rewarding their behavior. I Don’t mean with treats. Instead, it can be as simple as giving them attention for licking. If they are attention-seeking, try to ignore the behavior.

Reward them when they don’t lick. This is probably easiest to train if your dog has regular licking habits. For example, if they often lick you when you squat down to pet them and you want to curb that behavior, you can ignore the behavior and not pet them until they stop licking, then give them a treat.

Monitor their pain level and anxiety level. If they are licking due to pain or anxiety, make sure ther pain or anxiety are being improved so they won’t need licking as a coping method anymore.

Don’t let them stay bored. If their licking is the result of boredom, keeping them from getting bored will be the solution to curbing the licking. There are lots of enrichment ideas for dogs on the web. Keep their brain working and they won’t get bored.

Using Belly Bands On Pugs

October 23, 2021 by emilyreviews Leave a Comment

There are affiliate links in this post.

For the last six months or so of my pug Frank’s life, he was urine incontinent. I had already dealt with diapering my female pug, Beans. At first, I tried to diaper Frank in the same way that I was used to diapering Beans. He was a bigger pug, and the anatomy difference from their genders made the diapers I used on her, not work on him. We found belly bands to be a better solution for Frank.

What are belly bands?

Belly bands are male dog diapers designed just to absorb urine. They wrap around the pug’s waist, so if they pee, the pee is absorbed by the belly band.

There are disposable and reusable belly bands available in various sizes for different sizes of dogs.

Why are dog belly bands used on pugs?

Pugs are known for being hard to train, so some people use belly bands on their dogs who are not housetrained. In some cases, pugs will not urinate while wearing a belly band, so this keeps them from peeing while inside. In other cases, they will still urinate but it will just be contained to the belly band rather than getting on your floors or furniture. In other cases, pugs become incontinent with old age or injury.

Our Story With Male Pug Incontinence

In our case, Frank’s urinary incontinence was caused from degenerative myelopathy. DM is less common in pugs than pug myelopathy, which is a fairly common condition in pugs, sadly. It’s a neurological condition that causes them to lose control of their hind legs, and then DM continues to work up their spine, eventually rendering them completely paralyzed. On the other hand, pug myelapthy only affects the rear end and doesn’t travel up the spine further, however it often still affects the bladder.

If your pug becomes incontinent as part of their myelopathy, it’s important to look out for signs that your pug is emptying their bladder fully. They may be unable to express their bladder fully and/or regularly on their own. I recommend checking out this article about helping your dog express their bladder.

While we sometimes assisted Frank with expressing his bladder, he was often able to urinate on his own, into a belly band. We had him wear a belly band full time just to keep him dry and our furniture protected.

Frank wearing a Teamoy L1 belly band.

Reusable belly bands for pugs

You can buy reusable belly bands on Amazon or other sites. These bands are made to be very absorbent and can be washed in your washer and dryer and then reused.

I didn’t really like the idea of the cloth portion being peed into. What we opted to do was combine reusable with disposable. We purchased reusable belly bands, but then we used adult incontinence pads inside of the belly band. Then when Frank peed, we’d just swap out the pad and he could rewear the belly band as long as the urine was contained to the disposable pad (and it usually was). Then even if he went an entire day without getting any urine on the reusable belly band, we still tossed it in the wash just in case. With this routine, he usually only wore 1 reusable pad a day. We kept six reusable belly bands and I do laundry about twice a week normally anyway. That system worked out well to where we always had a clean reusable pad.

Our favorite reusable belly bands for pugs

Pugs are often difficult to fit into dog sizing. They are technically a toy breed, so it seems like they ‘should’ be a size small or perhaps even extra small in dogs items, yet they never seem to be. They are short and stocky for being such small dogs!

Frank was a bigger pug, about 26lbs. The biggest part of his belly was 17 inches. We tried a few brands of dog belly bands that didn’t fit very well. The brand that we wound up liking best was Teamoy brand from Amazon, in the size L1. These are for dogs with a waist size of 16-20 inches. We had tried other belly bands that said they were a similar size, but they were much thicker and longer, so they would extend farther up frank’s belly.

The teamoy L1 belly bands are a bit shorter, so they didn’t go as high up his back/belly which allowed him more range of movement. They were also a thinner material that hugged his body in a way that just was a trimmer fit.

We used them with these adult incontinence pads and they worked well together.

Frank wearing a different Teamoy L1 belly band.

Disposable belly bands

They do make disposable belly bands for dogs. We never tried theme with Frank. We did try disposable dog diapers with beans, and they were quite challenging to get them to stay on. Based on that, my assumption was that disposable belly bands would be challenging to keep on, too. The reusable belly bands that we used had a strong velcro that is quite adjustable so we were able to get a nice, snug fit.

Do All Pugs Scream Like Humans?

September 19, 2021 by emilyreviews 1 Comment

There have been a couple of viral videos showing pugs screaming while they get their nails trimmed. For many people, this has made them curious about pug screaming! I thought I’d tackle that topic in this blog post.

Do all pugs scream like humans?

No, not all pugs scream. I had two pugs for several years, one screamed and the other never did.

It is real, though. I have seen some comments on some of the viral videos suggesting that the sound must be edited in. That isn’t the case. Pugs really can scream like humans!

Why do pugs scream?

Pug screaming is just a form of barking, essentially. Pugs are relatively small dogs so they can’t really muster a huge, scary bark the way that a large dog could. So when they feel cornered or need to REALLY grab your attention, they scream instead. Most of the time if a pug ‘screams’ it’s because they are scared. Some pugs are rather dramatic, so it may seem like they are making way to big of a fuss out of nothing (like having their nails trimmed).

Do all pugs hate having their nails trimmed?

No, not all pugs freak out when they have their nails trimmed. If you get a pug puppy, getting them used to having their paws handled by people from a young age can help a lot. Even with an adult pug, if you can touch their paws when you aren’t cutting their nails, that can make nail cutting easier.

It’s also best if you can try to make sure their nails are cut safely. If a dog’s nails get cut too short and it cuts their quick, this can be painful for dogs. Many dogs who are afraid of having their nails trimmed, have had pain while having their nails trimmed in the past. So if we can avoid a dog ever having pain while their nails are trimmed, this will increase their odds of not being fearful of nail trims.

While not all pugs hate having their nails trimmed, it is common for pugs, or really dogs in general, to dislike it somewhat.

My pug Beans would try to walk away from you if she saw that you had dog nail trimmers in your hand. She clearly didn’t love having it done. However, once you got her held in place she’d basically give in to the fact that she was getting her nails trimmed and it wasn’t a huge deal.

My pug Frank, on the other hand, was more difficult. We used to have his nails trimmed at the vet, but he was always on-edge or a bit anxious while at the vet for any reason. This made him make a much bigger fuss when the vet trimmed his nails. He would scream the whole time our vet was trying to trim his nails. As a result, we found that trimming his nails at home made for a quieter experience! It was still sometimes noisy, though!

When we trimmed his nails at home, he’d be somewhat upset from the beginning, but he’d get more worked up over time. What we found worked best for us was to cut his nails in a few different sessions. We’d do a few nails until he started to get too worked up (but before he was screaming) and then we’d give him a break. Then we’d come back later and do more, again stopping if he started to get too worked up.

This wasn’t the most convenient for us, as it took us a couple of days to finish trimming all of his nails, sometimes. It seemed to help him to tolerate it better over time, though. I think if we forced him to sit through getting all of his nails trimmed in a single setting, he’d get too worked up each time and would associate nail trimming with more fear.

We also tried a dremmel to see if he found that easier to tolerate. He reacted to it worse than traditional clippers. Still, if you are really struggling with a pug who hates having their nails trimmed, I’d recommend trying different options. You never know what they’ll find most tolerable unless you try.

Do pugs bark a lot?

While pugs are a bit unique for being able to ‘scream’ as dogs, they aren’t generally noisy dogs. Pugs can make a wide range of sounds compared to some other dog breeds, most are quiet sounds though. For example, they can sneeze, sigh, snort and have audible farts. Generally though, they don’t bark a whole lot.

There are certainly exceptions, every pug is an individual. I have seen pug owners post saying they are really struggling with their pug’s almost constant barking. As a general rule though, pugs are known to be a quiet breed.

My pugs wouldn’t even bark if a stranger knocked on our door! They would occasionally bark at fast animals such as squirrels or chipmunks out of excitement. Other times they’d happily watch a chipmunk run by without making a sound. My pug Beans would bark if left home alone. She’d bark when we first left the house and then would occasionally start up barking again until we got back. They didn’t usually bark at other dogs or cats, or at people. They were both pretty quiet generally speaking. From what I’ve heard from other pug owners, most pugs aren’t bad about barking a lot. One thing I have read is that many pugs will bark at animals on TV!

Why Is My Pug Always Hungry?

August 17, 2021 by emilyreviews 3 Comments

There are affiliate links in this post.

Why is My Pug Puppy Always Hungry?

Pug puppies grow really rapidly until they are around 9 or 10 months old. Puppies younger than that have bigger appetites because they are growing pups! It is normal for puppies to eat more food for their size (based on their weight) than adult pugs.

If you think about it, human babies eat a lot for how little they are, too!

Beans’ backend fell between two couch cushions. I couldn’t help but laugh and take a picture before helping her out.

Why is my pug always hungry?

If your pug is an adult (1 year or older) ad they seem hungry all the time, it’s important to look at their size, weight, and the nutritional profile of their diet.

Food brands vary quite a bit in how many calories they provide and what nutrition they provide. If you haven’t already, it’s important to check out the calorie count of the food you have, and make sure you’re feeding your pug an appropriate amount of calories per day. If you were to switch between brands of food and assume that the same amount of food (Such as 1 cup per day) should be the same across any dry food brand, that is definitely not the case. A half a cup of food may be too little in one brand, and too much in another brand.

If you’re unsure how much your pug should be eating per day, it’s always best to double-check with your vet.

If your pug is being fed the recommended number of calories per day, but is still acting hungry all the time, it may be time to try a higher quality food. Cheaper dog foods are often corn-based, and these don’t offer very good nutrition for dogs. The “filler” food may be the right amount of calories, but may not make your pug feel as satisfied as a more nutritious food would.

With my pugs, they were on really cheap dog food when we first got them. We tried to give them 1 cup of food per day, which was actually over the recommended calories per day for them. Despite this, they acted like they were still hungry! When we switched foods to something more nutritious, we fed them 1 cup a day, which was the same volume, but fewer calories, than the store brand dog food. On the new food, they didn’t act hungry anymore! So despite being less calories, it seemed to be more filling for them.

How To Help Your Pug That Is Always Hungry.

As I mentioned above, it’s a good idea to ensure that your pug is getting nutritious food. That is a common cause of that ‘always hungry, never satisfied’ behavior. Once you’ve ruled out nutrition being the problem, here are other ways you can help your pug who is acting like they are constantly hungry.

Try one meal a day or multiple. Some dogs feel best when they have one big meal per day. Others do better having two 1/2 size meals per day, or even 3 1/3 meals per day. If you haven’t already, experimenting with different meal sizes and frequencies may make a difference in keeping your pug more satisfied.
Ignore begging. Pugs naturally love food, and if they find that begging gets them more food? They may beg often because they want more food even though they aren’t actually hungry. Giving them food when they beg reinforces that behavior. To curb it, you’ll need to ignore their begging.
Consider their activity level. If you are quite active with your pug, they may require more food on days where they are more active. Similar to when people workout.
See the vet about potential medical problems. There are a few medical problems that can cause a dog to act hungry all the time. Some of these include diabetes and worms. If your dog seems to have suddenly gotten a bigger appetite, this would be greater reason to suspect that it may be medical.
Consider a lower-calorie food. Sometimes volume makes a difference. Lower calorie dog foods make it possible to feed your dog more food volume-wise, without over feeding them calorie wise. We used Blue Buffalo weight management version of dog food, so it was lower calorie than most. It seemed to help our pugs.
Add water to their food. Have you ever noticed how soup can feel really filling even if it’s just a vegetable soup? The volume of the added water/broth makes it more filling. You can use a similar concept by soaking your dog’s dry food in water. They’ll then get water with their food which will make them feel fuller.
Use a slow-feed bowl. If your pug scarfs down their food too quickly, a slow feeder bowl can help them eat slower. Or you can put their food in a treat-dispensing toy or kong to make them work for their meal and help it last longer.