“With the kind of laugh that India had never expected to hear from him again, Yash reached for the bundle of skin folds. "And who do we have here?" Every bit of deliberate enunciation was gone from his voice. Instead his pitch jumped to that strange voice people reserved for babies. "Hey, there, beautiful baby!" And, damn it, the sun chose that moment to shoot a bright ray through a tree at his face. "This is Chutney," Ashna said in a matching high pitch, presenting Yash with the pug as though she were a particularly delicious ice-cream sundae. Chutney paused in her mouth-breathing to start lapping at Yash's face. India and China gasped. India reached out to take her away, but Yash was smiling into Chutney's face. Not his politician smile, not even his you've-amused-me, peasant smile. This smile yanked her back through the years, eyes disappearing into slits, too much teeth and gums. An explosion of unadulterated joy. Tremors rippled low in her belly, high in her heart.” SmilePugYash Raje Book:Incense and Sensibility Source: Incense and Sensibility
“They had named her Chutney because she smelled like a mix of too many things. None of them pleasant. It's how she had smelled from the day they had brought her home, an abandoned year-old puppy with balance issues. They had changed her diet several times, switched to feeding her homemade food, bathed her every day. Nothing worked. It was the slobber. There was just some sort of genetic thing that no vet could figure out how to mask. Tara had declared that there was something magical about having a dog with an odor problem living in a home that made incense.” OdorSmellyPug Book:Incense and Sensibility Source: Incense and Sensibility
“Why does she angle her head like that?" "She was abandoned as a puppy. When the shelter got her, they found a maggot infestation inside her ear. Her right eardrum's permanently damaged and it messes with her balance and makes her tilt her head like that." "Poor brave girl." He leaned over and dropped another kiss on her head. Chutney let out one of her love-grunts.” AwwwPugEar Problem Book:Incense and Sensibility Source: Incense and Sensibility