Pug People, we never realized one of our #bucketlist items was to interview a surfing pug and her mom, but guess what? We would see Gidget riding the waves on Insta and just had to talk Alecia into giving us the skinny, which she so generously did. Enjoy learning about Gidget’s quest to hang eight plus two dewlaps!
PP: Okay Alecia, we're dying to know, how did this begin? Where did you get the idea to have Gidget be a surfer?
Alecia: I had to direct her into something because she was such a high energy pug, we called her Fidget Gidget. And I wanted a dog to do sports with. I was friends with Greg Louganis and he was getting into all the national AKC agility competitions with his dogs and that’s where the idea came from.
PP: We love that Gidget has Greg Louganis to thank for her active lifestyle. Did you go straight to surfing, though? That seems like a big jump.
Alecia: No, I started her out with dog agility first, I set up tubes and tunnels and I drilled her. We were going to compete, but she was so fast I couldn’t keep up with her! Then, I did a lot of paddle-boarding in Maine and she took to it very well. Fidget Gidget always has to keep moving constantly, so I would be on the paddle-board and she would be walking back and forth between my legs.
PP: And the surfing idea was born!
Alecia: Yes, I took her to San Diego to try it. Obviously you can’t start them out on a five foot wave, I just put her on some white water and slowly moved it to letting her go through when a wave would break; a baby Gidget wave. She practiced all of 2014 and in 2015, she started doing the competitions.
PP: She was a natural?
Alecia: The first competition she placed and podiumed and I thought, ‘this baby’s really got something.’
PP: Are we wrong in assuming she was the only surfing pug?
Alecia: There actually was one other pug, Brandy.
PP: Not one, but two surfing pugs. Mind. Blown.
Alecia: Yep. (laughs) With a lot of the regular dogs in the competitions, they’d just sit on the board and ride, not a lot of animation. People would ask, how did you teach Gidget to turn and ride backwards? And it wasn’t taught, she just did it. It’s because she has to keep moving. Fidget Gidget.
PP: We have to say, Fidget Gidget looks like she’s having the time of her life.
Alecia: I know some people objected, but I never forced her to do this. You know when a dog’s uncomfortable on the water, the ears are down, eyes are ready to pop, the tail is down and never comes up. That was never Gidget. She always seemed to be having fun.
PP: Alecia, you were a PP even before your surfer girl. How did that start?
Alecia: I became a Pug Person thanks to a friend many years ago who was a cosmetologist in Malibu. She had a pug named Pat. I had always had chihuahuas and Bengal cats, but my friend and Pat turned me on to the pug thing.
PP: Pat the Pug. We have to give that an 'OMP'.
Alecia: So first I got Izzy, who’s now fifteen, and she’s typical pug material. Tail wagging all the time, chill, happy, with the mushy fawn face. Not like Gidget, the Energizer Bunny. Izzy was four and a half when I got Gidget and helped raise her as a puppy.
PP: What do you love most about pugs?
Alecia: Oh God, it’s everything. There’s so much. With Gidget, it’s the screaming, her voice. She’s very vocal, always screaming to do something, it just kills me. With dogs, you get the average “bark, bark”, but with pugs, it’s like they’re talking. The way they use their voices, they really want to communicate.
PP: And Gidget communicated her passion for something besides surfing…
Alecia: Yes, her affection for goats. She bonded with the baby Nigerian goats I had; they’d be doing the goat hoppity-hoppity thing and Gidget would be by their side doing the run and jump. They were named Buster Keaton and Ginger Rogers.
PP: If Gidget was a Hollywood celebrity, who would she be?
Alecia: Male or female?
PP: Either.
Alecia: She’d definitely be a superhero of some kind. Like, Ironwoman.
PP: She kind of reminds us of Ryan Gosling. Really muscle-y, light-haired, and fidgety. He’s very fidgety.
Alecia: Gidget, that’s your boy identity! You’re Ryan Gosling!
PP: You must have a million, but do you have a single favorite story about Gidget?
Alecia: There’s so many it’s hard to pinpoint, but I do get choked up when I think about Gidget helping the disabled children. There was a little girl who didn’t want to surf; her disability was she couldn’t move her hands or her arms, so she was scared. I said, “Why don’t we surf Gidget first?” It was the same day we were trying to break the Guiness Book record—which we did—and Gidget rode a five-foot, open face wave, and she just kept going and going… And when she was done, the little girl said, “Okay. I’ll go with Gidget.”
PP: Has Gidget officially retired from her surfing career?
Alecia: Yes, I retired her last year at the Dog Olympics. When she surfed into shore, my catcher and I just hugged and starting bawling.
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