Millie the Ranch Dog
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I think it’s time for a little update on Millie the Christmas puppy. Remember her?

The tiny black pug Santa dropped on our doorstep for the girls to love on and put in the baby doll stroller? Well, she’s grown into a fine addition to what is looking more and more like the Veeder Ranch petting zoo every day. Add a couple goats and a llama to our collection of ponies, dogs, cows and kittens and we could take this show on the road.

But don’t book us for any early appearances. Millie doesn’t wake up for the day until about 10 or 11. I know because she barks at us from her pillow fortress on the end of our 4-year-old’s bed.

Why does she bark at us? The jump down is too high, of course. Same as the jump up to the couch when anyone in this house thinks they’re going to be relaxing alone. Oh, the pug hates to see it. At the first sign of feet up and arms stretched behind a head, the little dog flees her pink fluffy bed to rescue you from loneliness on the couch. If only you could just give her a little boost…

And that’s what pugs are supposed to do. Lounge. And snuggle. And snore. But Millie’s multifaceted. Versatile. Complex. Put her in a box? She will shred it. Give her a squeaky toy, she prefers horse poop.

Seriously. Lord help us, it’s one of her favorite treasures. Good thing there’s plenty around the ranch for her collection by the front door, along with the dead snake, mouse guts and Barbie Doll head. Such a welcome site for visitors and the UPS man. Bonus, it makes her breath and farts completely intolerable.

Now that I think of it, Millie’s taste for dried up road apples could be her way of roughing up her fluffy edges so that she can properly fit in around here as a bona fide cattle dog.

If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a way to stop a pug chasing a trail of cattle over the hill toward your poor, unsuspecting mother, the answer is no. There’s not. At least I haven’t found the command yet, and boy have we practiced.

So we have some work to do on this cow dog thing for sure, but do you know what ranch pugs are really good at? Picking up cactuses and getting lost in the long grass. They’re perfectly low to the ground for things like that.

Millie proved it on our walk across the home pasture to admire the changing leaves the other day. One minute she was frolicking with the big dogs, the next, she’s nowhere to be found, turning my half-hour stroll into a one-hour search to find out what hole she might have fallen into.

Turns out she didn’t fall in a hole, but she did pick up a few little cactuses. And so she gave up on walking for the evening of course, and there she was, waiting for someone to rescue her by the fence post.

I don’t blame her. There’ve been plenty of times in my life out here that I’ve wanted to just wait by a fence post for someone to carry me home.

And so I scooped her up, Baywatch style, and we made the half-mile trek back to the house. If she were a true cow dog, she’d be humiliated, but she relaxed right into the role she was made for. Snuggling, owning us all and being heavier than she looks.

If you need us, we’ll be wrangling the cats, feeding the ponies and shopping for llamas to add to the Veeder Ranch petting zoo.

Peace, Love and Pugs,

Jessie