The Ballad of Johnny & June—Verse 1

We were happy as a two-pug family: John Henry (the Original Gangster Pug) and Jordan (the toothless, feisty grandma). We loved our pugs—in truth, we loved all pugs—but were limited by space as to how many we could have in our home. That's what we would remind each other whenever one of us wavered, looking sadly at the adoption page of our local dog shelter.

But there were so many pugs who needed homes. Motivated as we were, it didn't take us long before we found a loophole in our logic. No third permanent pug, but we agreed we could foster a pug via Pug Rescue Austin.

We sent out an exploratory email to PRA and they got back really quickly. As I said, there are a lot of pugs looking for homes, even temporary homes, and the PRA are great at connecting people with their pugs, pugs with their people.

In no time, we’d picked out our foster from the PRA site and had been approved. Then the poor guy got sick and wasn’t ready to be around other dogs, so PRA offered us a bonded pair of old pugs to foster.

Our momentum was unstoppable at that point.

Rescue pugs are renamed when they come to PRA to make them more marketable. The pair we were offered were Johnny Cash and June Carter. That fact alone pushed the decision over the line. We were not thinking rationally.

“Sure!” we said.

Agreeing to foster the Carter-Cashes was the best worst idea we ever had. They were an old couple, given up by a family they’d known all their lives just because they didn’t want to transport them to a distant part of the country.

It was heartbreaking to think about.

June was around 15 pounds. Tiny. Johnny was about 20 pounds heavier and must have had a fair bit of bulldog in him. When we originally volunteered, I think we’d imagined a little playmate for John Henry. But as we watched them come out of the vet waiting room, it was obvious these two would not be racing around the yard with our little sprinter, ever.

Older pugs come with issues. We knew that from our own Miss Jordan, our original senior pug, who was mostly bad-tempered, had a limp, and her dental situation when we adopted her was nothing short of tragic (and tragically expensive). Having four pugs at the same time might be over-ambitious, we realized, as we helped/hefted them into the car.

They’d been with us less than 24 hours and everyone had already developed a wild-eyed stare and a voice quiver. In the first 12 hours, we’d done our fair share of cleaning up surprises on the floor and trying to get the new arrivals to answer to their names (they came to the shelter as Gucci and Armani).

The changes they imposed on our family were immediate. Johnny stole a tortilla off my plate on Day One and was extremely interested in the contents of the trash. We adapted by eating at the table at all times, which was not a bad thing.

One positive was that they slept well together in their crate. And June barked when she needed to be out—usually at 6am. Sometimes she really needed to be out and struggled to make it to the back door in time. We became very motived to break all kinds of speed records making sure June’s first poop of the day was on grass rather than carpet. Whatever the record is for running 100 yards with a small dog, we broke it multiple times over that first week.

Their first breakfast was pandemonium. June didn’t eat at all while Johnny ate like he’d never seen food before. And when Jordan offered to help him out—even though, to be fair, he showed no signs of needing any help—she was rebuffed in the strongest fashion. Poor baby Jordan; brave boy Johnny—you know not who you're messing with.

At one point in the late morning, Johnny Cash and John Henry engaged in some jousting. John Henry was used to being the biggest little pug in his immediate environment. Big JC outweighed him by 30% or so. John Henry was soon struggling. What happened next surprised and, in a weird way, delighted me. Jordan climbed arthritically out of her bed and placed herself directly between the two boys. She stared at Big JC with her Jordan stare—part malice, part cataract. JC retreated into a corner, like a bad guy in a cartoon. And he stayed there while Jordan—half as big but infinitely feistier—held her ground. Up to this point, we had believed that she didn’t care for John Henry. That she, as best, tolerated him. But here she was: standing up for him. No one messes with this airhead but me, she was saying. We heard it. And so did Johnny Cash.

The novelty of the names soon started to wear off. Shouting “Johnny Cash” whenever we wanted to attract his attention was fun for roughly two hours. I switched to referring to them as Big JC and Little JC, which were yet more new names they also would never recognize. When talking to them, I mainly said “Hey you” or “Hey bay-bee” in a possibly/definitely creepy way.

We moved to the office for the day. Things took a while to settle down. Our kids took the beds as they'd done a hundred times before. Big JC followed Little JC around the room until she settled under my chair-that's really-storage. Big JC couldn’t get under there, so he lay beside her. At least for a while, before the pacing began again.

Slowly . . . eventually . . . they all settle. I could concentrate on work. Is this . . . going to be OK?

Despite the tricky start and my wife and I finally understanding what we’d said yes to, it took less than a day for us to fall in love with them, manipulative bastards that they were.