The following is an excerpt from my to-be-released-sometime-in-2014 book, FEELING WELL - SURVIVING LIFE AND STUPID PUNS:

OUR PUG, GEM

By Steve Ludwig

May I begin this little episode by saying that I'm sure we can all agree that our pals, the dogs that make our lives better and so much richer, are each the best dog in the whole world?

There's no other dog like your own, right? You won't get an argument from me that your Buddy is better than my Gem. 

But for Sue and me, Gem is our best dog in the whole world.

He was about two-and-a-half years old when we made the poor guy pose in that shirt up above. (His look pretty much says it all, doesn't it?)

That was about eleven years ago; Gem'll be fourteen on his next birthday in January.

Our little guy has slowed down quite a bit; he's gotten a lot grayer, and he's become a lot more dependent on us. 

And there'll never be another dog like him...

We named Gem after the character, Jem, from Sue's favorite movie, To Kill a Mockingbird. When we took Gem for his license and papers, the person filling out the form spelled Jem as "Gem." But we felt that it was a perfect mistake: our new little pug was a gem.

Sue and her friend Marie went to buy Gem from a breeder in southern New Jersey. Sue, her brother, and their parents grew up with pugs, so it was understood that a new dog would have to, naturally, be a pug. The plan was to buy a dog as a companion for Sue's parents, who were in their seventies at the time. They live in Toms River, NJ.

Sue and I would keep this new dog for a while, take him to a vet and make sure he was healthy before turning him over to my in-laws.

The breeders had told Sue on the phone that they had one pug left, a six-month-old.

When they brought Gem out to show to Sue and Marie, Sue thought to herself that she had never seen a weirder looking animal: his eyes bugged out to each side, his feet looked as big as horses' hooves, and when he walked, he looked like he was drunk!

The breeders assured Sue that his eyes would kind of "go back in and straighten out" as he got older and he'd learn to walk better; he walked that way now because he mostly walked on sand in his kennel and outside.

And also...he was the one everybody kept passing up and not taking.

It was obvious to Sue: This is the dog we have to have!

Knowing how loving, loyal, and mushy Gem is now, it breaks my heart to think that, for six months, he probably got his hopes up each time perspective "parents" came to look at him, only to be put back in his kennel.

But thanks to our friends, Liz and Edie, we were able to find out about this breeder, and our Gem.

Liz and Edie recommended this breeder to us because they had gotten their two pugs, Gert and Ernie, from there. As a matter of fact, Gert and Ernie are Gem's half-siblings; they share one parent.

And here they are, Gert on the left and Ernie on the right, in all their glory:

Gem's half-sister and half-brother are now in pug heaven; all the more reason to love Gem more and more every second we have left with him.

Gem does indeed live with Sue's parents in Toms River, as he has since we  brought him there twelve years ago, but it's never been in doubt that he's our dog. We visit him often, and he comes to stay with us for days on end quite a bit. 

He's simply been on "loan" to my in-laws all his life...

Gem and I first connected for keeps when I took him for a walk way back when. 

He had been living with my in-laws for a couple weeks when he developed a cold; normally nothing to worry about, but because he was new, we wanted to be sure, so we brought him to our vet up here in northern New Jersey.

All was fine, it was just a cold. When we got back from the vet's, I took Gem, runny nose and all, for a walk up the block from our house.

The poor little boy was exhausted from his cold; he stopped walking, plopped himself down on his backside, and looked up at me with those sad, pleading eyes.

"Whatsa matter, baby? Ya worn out?" I asked him.

I picked him up and started carrying him home. It was during this walk back home that he ever-so-gently placed his tired head on my chest and stared at me with loving, grateful eyes, all the way home. I talked calmly and gently to him, assuring him that we'd take care of him and make him all better. I was his savior! I was his forever hero...

And at the risk of sounding immodest,  it's clearly understood by everyone in the family that I'm Gem's favorite. Everybody else takes a back seat when I'm around. I'm the guy he leans against on the couch, I'm the guy whose legs he curls up in when we're in bed for the night.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Gem gives others in the family their due attention; it's just more so for his hero.

I always point to Sue and tell Gem, "This is your hero! Sue's the one who saved you back at the kennel! She's the one!"

It's so funny how Sue tells it. When she goes to visit her parents without me, and she arrives at their house, Gem of course goes crazy with joy...Company!!! He jumps up on her, gives her a lick, and then immediately runs to the door to look for me.

I can just hear him thinking to himself, "Where's Steve? Where's Steve? You guys are married; where is he?"

When I mentioned Gem in my book, SEE YOU IN CCU, I referred to the little boy as "Super Pug." And here's why that guy in the picture above is so super.

During the Christmas season of 2005, the vet discovered a cancerous mass cell tumor in Gem's neck. 

It was removed; the vet told us that with aggressive radiation, Gem's survival rate was 85%.

Well, that was certainly a good number!

What followed was six weeks of radiation, five days a week.

My in-laws, bless their hearts, would be driving at 6:30 AM each of those days, bringing Gem to the vet for his treatments. 

Gem would sit with them in the waiting room, on my father-in-law's lap, and when the doctor came out, good ol' Gem would dutifully jump off his lap and walk to the middle of three doors for his treatment. 

After a while, Gem didn't have to be led to the room. As much as he probably hated the treatments, that cute little boy would walk by himself into the room, followed by the doctor.

When his treatments were finally over, the radiologist called our vet to tell her that Gem was one of the nicest, sweetest dogs he ever treated. I could imagine Gem licking the radiologist each time he prepared Gem for his treatment.

 Gem kissed everyone. It seems ever since Sue brought him home from the breeder, he trusted all, and he loved everybody. He was grateful for the life he had been given.

To this day, Gem's skin is bare on his neck where the radiation permanently scorched his hair.

In 2008, Sue's dad told her that Gem had been walking funny lately. Sue made the ninety-minute ride down to their house to observe Gem.

Within a couple hours of getting there, Sue saw to her horror that Gem's eyes were rolling around in his head; he couldn't stand. He kept falling over.

She put him in the car and immediately brought him to our vet up by us.

They kept him for two days for observation, and then gave us the grave news: In all likelihood Gem had a brain tumor, and his chances of survival were about 10 %. His eyes had stopped rolling around, but he was still walking cockeyed.

The plan was to bring him to a specialist in Red Bank, NJ, who would X-ray Gem's brain to confirm our worst fear.

Gem slept with us in our house the night before I drove him to Red Bank; needless to say, Sue and I didn't sleep.

I can only imagine what my in-laws went through that night, retiring to bed without their beloved Gem.

As I sat in the waiting room the next day with him, I held Gem closer to me than I ever had. Let's face it; if the X-rays showed what we figured they would, the next day would probably be our last together. Sue and I had already decided the night before that we would put our little guy to sleep if the tumor was a reality.

When they came to get him from me, I gently placed him off my lap and onto the floor. 

Normally Gem would pull back and resist at first when one of the vet's assistants would take his leash. This time it was almost as if he had given up; he licked the assistant's hand when she bent down to pet him hello, and wobbled away with her.

"We'll see you tomorrow," she said to me.

That night was even worse than the one before. The next morning Sue went to work; she said she couldn't bear to be there when we got the bad news. I took a personal day from my teaching job; Gem was a member of our family, and he needed me to be with him in his time of illness.

I waited in the room for the doctor to come. He didn't have Gem with him. As he placed the X-ray in the holder for me to look at, I thought of how I would tell Sue that Gem was no longer with us.

The doctor said, "He's got an infection in about 95% of his sinuses. With very aggressive antibiotics, it should clear up. Unfortunately he's lost his hearing permanently, but many dogs live good, quality lives without hearing. He's deaf, but he'll live. We'll bring him in to you in a minute."

I couldn't believe what I had just heard!

"He doesn't have a brain tumor?" I never thought I'd be saying those words.

"No. A very serious, but curable infection. Because he was walking funny, I wanted to check his spine, so I X-rayed that for you at no charge. He has a vertebrae that's a little out of whack, so he'll have trouble getting up and down stairs and on and off the couch."

When they brought Gem to me, he was still unsteady in his gait, and he still looked like he had a brain tumor.

He looked tired, all drawn out.

I put Gem in the car and called Sue.

She got on the phone and said sadly, "Hello?"

I almost couldn't get the words out.

"He's OK. He's gonna live. Our little guy has a bad infection."

Sue just started crying, I started crying, and I told her I'd call her parents with the good news.

In the four years since then, Gem has, incredibly, hung in there. The vet has assured us his quality of life has not been compromised with his deafness. He's had another malignant tumor removed, this one from his paw. Here he is when we brought him home from that procedure, still a little groggy from the anesthesia. Notice the bandage on our tough boy:

He's had other little things throughout the years.

Gemmy-boy has survived numerous rashes on his body, and recently he's had four benign tumors removed from various parts of his body.

We've decided if the time comes and there's a malignancy, we'll remove it, but no more radiation. Certainly no chemo.

Gem's been through enough.

We carry him up and down the stairs, on and off the couch.

I put on my bathing suit, sit in the tub with him during his bath time, hold the nozzle and let that warm water gently spray all over his body. We stay in the shower for a good half-hour, that spray massaging his aging joints.

He sits in my lap and lays his head comfortably on my chest...Just like he did all those years ago when I carried the little guy home with his cold.

He loves cuddling up with me on the couch, under a blanket, and waiting for bedtime:

Oh sure, he's a few pounds heavier than he should be, but he's our boy.

And he still lovingly annoys the heck out of everybody, begging for table food and treats. But we'll continue to feed him a bit of a meatball, some pasta, a little ice cream, some cheese...

We're happily gonna spoil him more and more.

And when that day finally arrives, and Gem joins his sister, Gert and his brother, Ernie, he will have left us with a lifetime of unconditional love, of undying faithfulness, and a family with an emptiness that can never be replaced.

...Just like your dog, the best in the whole world.

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Are you a lover of pop culture? I am! And I have a radio show called STEVE LUDWIG'S CLASSIC POP CULTURE, at www.PlanetLudwig.com. Why not give a listen at your leisure? Thanks!

IF YOU ENJOYED READING THIS BLOG, WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO CONSIDER BUYING MY FIRST BOOK? IT'S CALLED SEE YOU IN CCU: A LIGHTHEARTED TALE OF MY OPEN-HEART SURGERY.
JUST GO TO MY WEBSITE  www.ccubook.com  FOR ORDERING INFO. IF YOU BUY DIRECTLY FROM ME ON THE SITE, IT'S HALF-PRICE.


AND FOR ALL THINGS NEWSWORTHY, MY BROTHER TOM (AND HIS BUDDY SINCE SECOND GRADE) HAS A COOL BLOG. IT'S CALLED "SECOND GRADE MINDS," AND YOU CAN FIND IT AT www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com .

And as always, thank you all so much for visiting my blog!  ~Steve Ludwig