Like Petting a Packaged Ham

I’m standing at the Dairy Queen on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, waiting to order a chocolate cone. Ahead of me is the new American nuclear family: two boys, a father, and a mother cooing to a Chihuahua clutched to her chest in a front-loading doggy knapsack. A few weeks later, Us Weekly runs a photograph of Susan Sarandon with a suede bag dangling from the crook of her elbow, a frothy little white dog peering out of it.

Like cell phones, lattes to go, and iPods, the toy dog has become something of a fashion accessory, not so much walked these days as worn. According to the American Kennel Club, four of the top ten most popular breeds since 2000 have been small ones—Yorkshire terriers, dachshunds, shih tzus, and miniature schnauzers. The most popular dogs of the day are not much bigger than the designer bags in which they are carried. To me, they seem more like the white mice I owned as a child—forever in danger of being crushed or having a nervous breakdown.

But there is one meaty exception. The toy dog for me, and anyone else who’s grouchy about the trends (dog-related or otherwise), is the pug—the anti-toy-dog toy dog.

Technically the largest member of the toy-dog category, the pug has the disarming quality of looking simultaneously guilty and repentant. And, unlike my friend’s perpetually quaking toy poodle, pugs are steadfast and substantial; petting one is like petting a packaged ham, and with the largest of the breed weighing in at around eighteen pounds, they are too heavy to carry on your person.

With their bulging, Peter-Lorre-like eyes and deeply furrowed brows, pugs seem to have a melancholy response to all questions directed at them—whether regarding a red rubber ball or the current state of the world. The Dutch call them mopshond, taken from the word mopperen, which means to grumble. A pug would be the perfect companion to join me when I rent Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth on DVD.

Pim was the first pug I ever met. She lived across the street, and I would watch her taking short, slow walks with her owner. One night, my boyfriend and I stopped to say hello. But Pim seemed to be growling at us, so we backed away. “That means she likes you,” said her owner.

This made sense to me. I am the sort of person who is routinely told to lighten up, and my own relatives have been known to wonder aloud whether it’s OK to hug me. Despite my ferocious love for family and friends, my desire to be embraced and cherished, there’s something about me that roars when people get close. But if I had a pug at the end of my leash, my way of showing affection might start to make sense. Both the pug and I growl with pleasure.

At a recent pet store Pug Meetup in Burnsville, where pug owners and potential owners had gathered, a woman asked if I wanted a black or fawn-colored pug. On her lap was Daisy, a fawn—giddy and wheezing from running, her tongue curled up like ribbon candy beneath her nose. I was smitten but uncertain. I didn’t want to be exposed as a pug-loving imposter, especially not here, with a high-spirited herd of twenty circling the room in great bursts of speed. “I’m still trying to decide,” I replied, which was true enough.

For now, I’ve got a pug reference manual and a mug shot of Pugsy Malone, a canine malcontent made famous by the Internet and greeting cards. His grave expression confirms that I’m in good company for all my worrying about the war, my old car, drowning polar bears, and roaming centipedes.