Pugs are adorable little dogs. I mean, I know all dogs are adorable, but there’s something about pugs’ little smooshed up faces that I especially love and want to give a million kisses. However, I’ve been given a bit of pause now that Andy Richter has shown me what a pug looks like inside an MRI machine!!
My friend’s pug went to the vet pic.twitter.com/kP4r5o4ZOQ
— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) December 17, 2019
- I… don’t know how to feel. In a tweet that’s been liked more than 131,000 times and retweeted more than 15,000 times, Richter revealed that his friend’s dog recently had to go to the vet for an unnamed health problem. Obviously it was serious enough for the dog to need an MRI, and boy, was it eye-opening (pun intended).
- Why are its eyes so big?! Pugs’ big old googly eyes are silly and adorable when you look at the actual dog, but the fact that they’re so wide and THERE in an MRI machine is vaguely terrifying. They’re pointing different ways and just seem unreal, but real they are.
- Poor pugs have been the result of human interference. As The Independent points out, the pug MRI may be simultaneously horrifying and hilarious, but it also shows just how much pugs have been messed with by humans to create the ultimate cute dog. “If you were to get a pug head cake and cut it to take a look down the middle, that is what you are looking at,” said London-based vet Dr. Rory Cowlan. “This is a slice at the level of the eyes, looking head-on at the pug, just two or three inches further back.”
- They have serious health problems because of it. “Their faces have been shortened due to intensive breeding by humans, unfortunately,” Cowlan explained. “They have these massive eyes, bunched up noses… The condition is called brachycephalism.” This means they’re at risk for serious complications that could be fatal. According to Pet MD, pugs are at risk for “Pug Dog Encephalitis (PDE) and canine hip dysplasia (CHD), as well as minor concerns like elongated palate, patellar luxation, stenotic nares, Legg-Perthes disease, entropion, keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS), hemivertebra, and obesity” to name other things.
- Here’s hoping Richter’s friend’s pug was okay, though. No one wants to see their beloved pet unwell, so hopefully the MRI told vets all they needed to know to get the pup the treatment it needed to make a full recovery.
