GUSTAFF'S GONE VIRAL

July 13, 2017. I saw that Gustaff's old video that I posted on June 22, 2017 was shared by one of those IG accounts that likes to collect and repost popular pics and videos on their account. I thought, oh that's cool. And then other accounts started doing the same thing. Then Gustaff's video popped on a few other Facebook pages. We started getting DM's from companies that wanted to share the video on their account and other platforms. Some even wanted to buy the license! Vince and I were witnessing the phenomenal power of a video going viral. That's right. GUSTAFF'S GONE VIRAL.

His Instagram follower count shot up that weekend and before we knew it, we already had 1000+ followers. It was unbelievable. We made a video back in May to celebrate on hitting 200+ followers. This week, we made a new video to celebrate on hitting 2000+ followers. And it's still climbing! As of this writing, Gustaff currently has 4540 followers. That number is probably going to increase in the next few weeks because we authorized a few places like Daily Mail, Buzz Feed, UNILAD, Today.com, and other media companies to share his video. They'll edit and release the video based on their schedules.

I mentioned earlier that a few companies offered to buy the license to the video. Vince and I thought about it and we weren't really sure what to do. We thought we could try it out to see how it works. I didn't read any good things about it. I ended up talking to the owner of another popular Corgi, Zero Marie Hussein Corgibutt, who also had a video that went viral a few weeks ago. It was a really interesting conversation about how they handled getting those kinds of offers, how they made some mistakes the first time, not being happy with how some of the media companies handled their video, and not seeing the major profit they were promised. They said ultimately, it all depends on what your end goal is. They decided they were just fine giving back to the Corgi community and not trying to monetize all of their videos. However, they did end up selling the rights to one of their videos to help police it online because it was being shared on a lot of platforms with no credit to them. 

Since this was Gustaff's first video, we decided that we were fine with the video being shared and being non-exclusive to anyone - which is why it's popping up everywhere - but we agreed not to sell the license for it. If we spot someone sharing it without credit, we'll just tell them to link back to his account. I'm not worried about losing money on the video because I wasn't trying to make money in the first place. At the moment, I don't care if those companies are enjoying the million page views they're getting in their revenue. As long as they credit or link back to his instagram account, we're happy.

Gustaff now has a Gmail account so I can field the incoming offers and I'm working on his Facebook page, which I have yet to promote. I've noticed that a lot of popular Instagram pets do a lot of giveaways or contests to get more followers and connect with other popular pets. I don't want to do that unless I'm feeling generous and have money to spare, which I don't. I've actually considered making merch for Gustaff. I jokingly said that I'll start an Etsy store once he hits 5000 followers. I guess I better get started!

I'm sorry, Gustaff :(

Today, Gustaff was officially diagnosed with Giardia. What is Giardia? It's a parasite infection and it's pretty bad for dogs, especially for puppies. How did Gustaff get Giardia? Carelessness. This is what happened.

On Sunday, after Vince's mom flaked on us, we drove around with Gustaff. We decided to stop by and visit Josh and Tanisha since it's been a long while since we last hanged out with each other and they wanted to see Gustaff. They have 2 dogs that are currently staying at their dad's place since Tanisha is taking care of their second child. We hanged out in the backyard, and I was deathly scared for Gustaff to be around there. Josh said the previous owner of their house had a German Shepherd, who used the backyard as his bathroom and the owner didn't really pick up after him. Josh joked that he would find old dog poop showing up once in a while. Gustaff found and ate said piece of old dog poop. We didn't get to him in time and he ate most of it. I was worried, I should've been panicking because Gustaff just ate old buried poop in the dirt, but I thought maybe it won't be that bad. He was eating and drinking normally the rest of the day. And his poop was still solid. It'll pass out of his system. Puppies eat poop. It's normal.

I was fucking wrong.

Tuesday morning, I checked up on him and his crate was full of poop and diarrhea. We had to throw away the crate bed and his toy. Vince gave Gustaff a shower immediately and I wiped and sanitized his crate. We decided right there to take him to our vet, which was unfortunately on the other side of town where we used to live. I took a sample of his poop to bring in and we brought his papers with us since Gustaff is a new patient. Gustaff continued to have diarrhea with streaks of blood in there. We met a new vet, Dr. Wallace, and he prescribed to us 2 Metrodynozale tablets to give to Gustaff. He said he would call us with the results the next morning. That one visit cost us $120+. And Gustaff still had another appointment this weekend for his shots.

I'm seriously devastated for Gustaff. I mean it's easy to blame Josh for not cleaning up his yard of all the old poop but we're also to blame for not stopping Gustaff from eating it. Now Gustaff is sick and we have to monitor him. Vince is working from home again to keep a close eye on him. And I'm waiting for a call from the animal hospital to let us know when his meds are ready to pick up.

I'm so sorry Gustaff. We're gonna help you get better, buddy.

They beat Miz/Maryse, John/Nikki, and Daniel/Brie to advance in this "tournament."

Then again, it's just a Facebook poll.

But still!

LONG UPDATE! NOW WITH CORGI!

That right there is the face of the man I love holding a puppy that he's been wanting to own for over a decade.

Before Vince and I moved into our house and we were still in the early stages of house shopping, Vince did some research and looked into Corgi breeders. We went to a Corgi meetup last year and asked some of the owners for recommendations. He settled with Zion Corgis, located somewhere around Arizona. He filled out an online form and put a down payment to get on the waiting list around August. We were expecting to wait a little longer than the rest because we specified that we wanted a male Corgi, and the litter doesn't always get a lot of male puppies either.

Last week, Vince got an update from the breeder, Lindsey, asking if we wanted to get a male Corgi. The catch is that this Corgi is a little bit more expensive because she originally kept him to be a show dog. However, her other friends deemed him not show ready (I'll get to that in a bit) and she sadly had to release him for the waiting list. Vince and I talked about it and agreed to take the puppy plunge and let her know that we'd be driving over on Saturday morning to pick him up.

It was our first time ever to drive to Arizona and the drive was absolutely boring. There just wasn't a lot of interesting things to see along the way since we're just driving to another desert. Probably the only exciting thing was seeing a motorcyclist's getting flat tire as he was getting off a freeway exit and pulling into a gas station. And the roads had a lot of potholes that were badly covered up. This puppy was our sole reason to endure this trip. Also, seeing a bunch of Corgis running around at a ranch sounds fun too.

We arrived at Lindsey's place, which was huge. We saw she had a lot of crates in the living room with some adult Corgis just chilling in there. One of them just won a show before we arrived. She also had 2 cats, one of them being one of those hairless Mr. Bigglesworth breed, and she had kittens! They're actually pretty cute sans fur! Lindsey then led us to the puppy den that had 2 separate pens. One is for the puppies she's keeping and the other pen is for the puppies she was giving away. She picked up one big puppy and introduced us to Bullseye (her litter was named after Toy Story characters). Vince and I fell instantly in love with him.

She explained to us why she had to give up Bullseye. He didn't stand up straight like the other puppies. His elbows stick out and he walks around like a bulldog. She assured us it's not going to affect him as he gets older and he'll grow out of it. As a puppy being groomed to be a show dog, it's not acceptable. Plus, he had these stray white strands of fur on his mostly black body, and that was another no-no. She said Bullseye was her favorite so she was really sad about giving him up. We paid in cash and she gave us his folder of his information, like his shots and his certificate of pedigree (his parents are champs). She even bought us a crate, an exercise pen, and a puppy bed that we paid extra for, which saves us a trip). I drove the car on the way back so that Vince can comfort Gustaff during the long, now not-so-boring trip back to Vegas.

Vince told his parents about Gustaff and they wanted us to come over. We stopped by at Petco and signed up for a membership here, thanks to Lindsey giving us a Petco coupon book, and bought more things for him. We had to go back home and give him some food and water before we got ready to leave again. We grabbed some food from El Pollo Loco and then drove to his parent's place. His parents love him too! They couldn't stop laughing at how he looked like a stuffed toy. Freddie didn't really care for him at first but after a while they got to to formally introduce each other and sniff each other's butts, with Freddie nearly sitting on Gustaff. After that, we headed back home to play with him some more and set up his crate and pen in one of the spare rooms. Vince's plan is to not let the cats see Gustaff for a while. We want to introduce him slowly and get them used to each other, especially when both of us are not home during the day.

Our first weekend was a bit tiring now that we have a puppy to schedule around. This means Vince and I will be taking lunch breaks to go home and check on Gustaff mid-day to change his sheets and play with him. We have to wake up and sleep early, and the cats know something's up. Unfortunately, Gustaff's training with Lindsey is quickly wearing off so we'll have retrain him in the basic stuff like learning to use the puppy pads, getting used to being in a crate, and being more diligent with clicker training.

Oh! I should probably explain the choice for his name. His full show name (just for kicks) is Gustaff Growlithe Gallifrey the Third. We have seriously planned this name for like 2-3 years. His name is a combination of our nerdy passions:

• "Gustaff" is named after Tron Bonne's robot from Mega Man
• "Growlithe" is from Pokemon
• "Gallifrey" is from Doctor Who
• "the Third" is from Lupin The Third

Even better was seeing the names of his family lineage from the certificate of pedigree. The certificate lists his parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, etc. by their full registration names. Vince told me he spotted "Triple H" somewhere and he was right; from both sides of his family, he had great, great grandparents named "Triple H" followed by a baseball reference. Anyways, we love him so much and we hope we can raise him to be a good pupper.