29/06/2019
The Pugacure
I never knew that dogs licking feet was a thing until I met my cousin, Tim’s dog Rocky. He started licking my feet and they wore completely cleaned by the time I was done (which was before Rocky was.)
I have always hated anyone touching my feet. Attempts to tickle them resulted in danger to any part of the offenders body I could kick to make them stop.
So when Ferguson first eyed my feet and started to lick them, I decided to see how long it would last. forty five minutes later, I couldn’t outlast him. I was done!
It was an obsession. It was something he seemed to have to do. I wasn’t his only victim in the household, he would insist on Isaac’s participation in this pugritual that he was driven to do.
It was strangely a weird, pleasant experience. It was like getting a foot massage, only with this really disgusting sound of the wet, sloppy kisses. An unexpected benefit was that I tended to have dry, cracked heals on my feet, but Gus’ gift resulted in smooth heals.
If he saw bare feet, you could see a shift in his attention and he was ready to go. At night, he would walk to the foot of the bed, expectantly. Impatiently. Socks came off,he would stand and the nightly ritual would begin.
Sleep was not permitted until the ritual was complete. Attempts to bypass a night would result in an attempt to sneak under the covers to complete the task at hand.
It was his crack.
He would start standing, finding the perfect place to start. Soon, his eyes would closet and he would lay down, almost like he was in a zen sort of trance. He would start between the toes and cover the foot with purpose and his own methodology.
I was talking to our vet about it one visit and he told me that there was a purpose to the behavior. We detoxify through the sweat of our feet and the sweat contains a lot of chemical information about our physical wellbeing. He said that, in a sense, it was a way that he kept tabs on me and my health. Dogs collect information about their world through their sense of smell and taste.
There were also times he seemed to scan me with his nose. I watched him scan the back of a coworker, who later told me that the three places he stopped were the three places where she had surgery to remove skin cancer. He didn’t linger long, so I think he knew, but moved on. If there was something to worry about, he wouldn’t have let it go.
I have always believed since Dr. Gus alerted me to a cancerous tumor in my left breast, he knew more about my physical health than any of my medical team combined. I also believe that if the cancer came back, he would know before medicine could find it. So did some of my medical team.
He knew when I was sick. He knew when the people he loved the most were sick. There were subtle changes in his behavior when he was around another cancer survivor. He was that tuned in with that aspect of the people around him. And knowing that Gus knew that I was okay helped me. I could rest in knowing that he was my early detection system if the cancer came back.
We nicknamed this daily ritual, this obsession, a pugacure.
I miss it already.
