Pug Traumatic Syndrome

Something occurred at daycare on Monday and Pugly just hasn’t been the same since.

I picked him up Monday afternoon and took him back to the office with me to handle a computer crisis and he completely freaked out; he was totally out of control. Normally a sweet dog where people are concerned, he was barking at every little noise and at every person and he kept pulling away from me to run after people (my co-workers), jump on them and bark aggressively at them, even the ones that were being nice to him and trying to make friends. He never acts like that with people — strange big dogs at first meeting, yes, but not people. He was really wound up. One person called him “mean” and one person was traumatized because she had been bit by a small dog as a child. I was embarrassed and I wanted to cry.

When I put him back in the car, he went right into a Puggy nap, which isn’t normal. He doesn’t usually sleep in the car because he doesn’t like riding in the car; it makes him anxious. When we got home, he ate his dinner and went to sleep on the sofa for a good hour and a half.

Then when we went to bed that night, he had some sort of panic attack, acting like something was outside the window on the second floor. He was totally freaked out. Eventually he calmed down, but he was kind of out of sorts and quite yesterday morning.

When my neighbor went by the house to walk him yesterday afternoon, she said that he wasn’t sitting in his window seat but sitting on the sofa and he didn’t want to pee or really leave the property. Normally he doesn’t like to do “his business” in our own yard. When I came home, he peed on our bushes but didn’t want to walk down the street and he was rather tame all night.

This morning when I took him to daycare, he wasn’t at all excited about it. Usually he’s hyper-excited about going to daycare, but he was just wandering around the place like “ho-hum” while I talked to the girl up front. I kind of remember someone from there mentioning on Monday that he had been avoiding some other dog so I asked her to find out about that. I also asked her to keep an eye on him because he seemed overly interested in one of his back legs though I can’t find any bites or sores. Plus, he’s just been acting weird.

I really don’t know what got into him on Monday. Hopefully he’ll get his Puggy self-confidence back today. I’m debating if I should take him to Pug Night tonight or if that would just stress him out more. It’s times like this when I wish dogs could talk.

Tagged as: dog, photography, Pug