THE PUGDASHIANS Pugs With Fashion and Passion

By Dina Ruiz

What do former First Lady Barbara Bush and the Kardashian sisters have in common? They’ve influenced one of the most popular pup-centric accounts on Instagram: The Pugdashians of Portland, Maine.

Like their famous namesakes, the Pugdashian sisters have plenty of curves, mostly on their backsides where they sport tightly coiled, cinnamon-roll-like tails. And it’s thanks to the late Mrs. Bush that they charm their followers by flaunting perfect strings of pearls. According to Pugdashian mom Lori Sorois, their success stems from one spontaneous event after another. Years ago, her pups were trained to be therapy dogs. A chance meeting solidified one of their trademarks. “We would be at The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, so I thought, ‘They need to wear pearls like Barbara.’ I made the first string. I just went to the craft store, bought them and strung them.” The former First Lady loved it and asked for a photo with the dogs. Lori had no idea it would end up being the signature look for her famous flat-faced ladies.

The family’s pugs, now sporting cute (homemade!) outfits and those ubiquitous pearls, were soon requested to help raise money for a local rescue by sitting outside of a friend’s pet store. Tourists, getting off at a bus stop nearby, would snap away and leave donations. One day, as the three fawn pugs sat on a bench in front of the store, someone asked Lori, “What do you call them?” Without missing a beat, she replied, “They’re the Pugdashians!”

This phenomenal success stems from a woman who didn’t even know what a pug was twenty years ago. “I wasn’t a dog person. I’d see people dressing up their dogs and I’d give them a look.

People wanted to put a A $40,000 dog park in our town and I said, ‘Not with my tax dollars!’” she says with a chuckle. Then, it happened. “Eighteen years ago, I started seeing a little creature outside the window. It was a little old lady walking a dog. I asked her what it was, and it was a pug. A year later we had ourselves a pug.” That was Puggy, and Sissy came along eight months later. “I started going to Pug Rescue meet-ups. We started fostering, transporting, everything Pug. We did that for quite a few years and had several fosters.”

The current incarnation of The Pugdashians—Sissy, Tilly, Natty, and Missy—have more than 400,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram, and close to 350,000 on TikTok where their videos have garnered almost six-million likes. But it hasn’t always been Pugs, pictures, and pearls, for Lori Sorois, her husband Jeff, and their son Lucas. In fact, posting photos of the pugs stemmed from a dark time in the family’s history. In 2009 the couple, at the time childless by choice, was faced with an emergency placement of a relative, Lucas, who was just a toddler. Unbeknownst to the Sorois’s, the child was autistic (and didn’t speak until he was four.) Throughout the first year, Lucas would kick, scream, and thrash for hours, day in and day out. In her own desperation for a little break, a little happiness, Lori would throw a photo of the family’s two pugs on her Facebook page. People began to take notice. More importantly, the pugs were able to help soothe the little boy’s soul. Almost nothing calmed him except the serene observance of his furry siblings. “We only had Puggy and Sissy. Lucas would be crying. I’d be crying. Puggy and Sissy would look at him, look at me. Give him kisses, then look at me again. They stayed beside him. It gave us comfort.” Once Lucas was diagnosed and got the help he needed, Lori was able to exhale. The Sorois’s adopted him soon after, and the young man, now almost fifteen, blossomed into an integral part of team Pugdashian. “He is amazing now. Natty sleeps with him every night. He’s understanding of where Pugs come from. I’ll hear him explain to people, ‘Pugs are from China 2,500 years ago!’” Lucas even takes a speaking role in some of the family’s charming videos.

Lori and her husband Jeff are both professionals in the elder care field. Jeff is a nursing home administrator, and Lori works with seniors in their residences. All four of their pugs are registered therapy dogs, doing their good deeds at hospice, a youth detention center, elderly center, and nursing homes. “We’ve been on many dying bedsides,” Lori says. “I said to our friend who was passing away, ‘What can I do for you?’ He wanted one of the dogs. When I got back, the minister was giving last rights, but Sissy was cuddling with him.”

The Pugdashians do so much at home, but they’ve also left their paw-prints on international causes, most recently helping to save a human Ukrainian family with several pugs in the Russia/Ukraine conflict. In an almost unbelievable tale, a Russian friend of Lori’s arranged for the family and their thirteen pugs to flee the country. Lori and the Pugdashians then helped raise almost $15,000 to resettle the family in Canada, along with the eight pugs who survived the ordeal.

The Pugdashians do so much at home, but they’ve also left their pawprints on international causes, most recently helping to save a human Ukrainian family with several pugs in the Russia/Ukraine conflict.

As if a huge social media presence (run without help), full-time work in senior care, and raising a teenager with special needs wasn’t enough, Lori decided to throw a wrench in it all by teaching herself how to show her pugs in the professional arena. “We went to a Meet the Breed event and someone said, ‘You should show that one!’ and it was Tilly. So, I did a quick study on breed standards and entered a dog show nearby a month or two later. Mind you, I had trained by watching a YouTube video on dog handling. Off we went, and I accidentally stood in the German Shepherd line at first. But, once I found the correct line—we won!”

Lori loves the competition but calls it quite political and cutthroat. “I’ve had a lot of mentors, and they tell me, ‘The dog that gets the ribbon isn’t always the one who should have won it, but everybody knows outside.’ Being so new, and having accomplished what I’ve accomplished, it feels good.” Her Tilly and Missy are grand champions, and Natty is a bronze champion. “Our dogs sleep with us every night—they aren’t show dogs. It’s not the life we want for them. The joy for me is me getting to show my own dogs.”

Lori, who was sewing clothes for the pugs when we spoke, always keeps it light, whether on social media, on a TV interview or on the phone. She is buoyant and sincere. “I love to do crafts. So, when I’m making the fleeces and stringing pearls, it allows me to craft. I make quilts for a nonprofit called Pugs Take DC. They raise money for Pug rescues all over the region. I make a pug quilt and raffle off tickets.” She cherishes every moment of this crazy life she could have never imagined twenty years ago. “It’s fun. I get messages, ‘Your posts make me smile,’ or ‘I suffer depression and the pugs help me through it.’ We love it.” She and her chic crew wouldn’t change a thing.

Dina Ruiz is a longtime Peninsula resident who has worked in the media for more than 30 years. She has been an anchor at KSBW-TV and featured on the TV shows “Candid Camera” and “Mrs. Eastwood and Company.” She has a masters degree from San Jose State in creative writing. Her Instagram handle is @DinaMRuiz.

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We are thrilled to be welcoming Dr. Taemi Horikawa to our Aptos practice! Dr. Horikawa completed her veterinary education at the University of California, Davis, followed by a rotating internship in Pittsburgh, PA and a comparative ophthalmology residency in Rocklin, CA.

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By Morgan Eastwood

Dogs on skis, pups driving cars, and paws popping open bottles of wine aren’t figments of Ron Schmidt’s imagination. The conceptual photographer makes these silly scenarios come to life with an exquisite body of work that is featured on greeting cards, books, and major outdoor brands such as L.L. Bean. Schmidt is an artist based out of Newburyport, Massachusetts, whose muses have four paws and a tail. With the help of his wife and artistic partner Amy Schmidt and their yellow Lab, Lewie, Ron Schmidt Art Brand Studios can depict just about anything he dreams of.

More of a planner than a spur-of-the-moment shooter, Schmidt designs his photos to reveal volumes in just one frame. “We’ll ask ourselves, ‘Is there a story here?’ And if it can be a story, with a character, then we’re like ‘Alright, we’ll produce it.’ Typically, you’ll see a pretty image of a dog, or something like that, in a park. They’re beautiful images, but they don’t really tell a story, you know, they’re just a beautiful image. And I try to create images that tell stories.”

Schmidt takes pride in how nuanced the work can be. In a photo titled “Kane,” Lewie the Lab sticks his snout through the mail slot of his home’s front door at Christmastime. In his mouth, the familiar red and white stripes of a curved candy cane. Schmidt points out that this particular image has dual meaning; it can be regarded as the dog sneaking a sweet treat through the letter box, or something entirely different, like the pooch giving a peace offering to his nemesis—the mailman. “It’s funny, they’re kind of vague in that way so they’re open to interpretation,” Schmidt explains. He likens his photos to interactive art and is always enthusiastic about differing opinions. “We do school visits, bringing the photos to the kids who are typically between first and fifth grade, and do creative workshops. The images lend themselves really well to stories. We don’t even tell them the name [of the photo] because the name will kind of give them a path, so we say, ‘What do you think is happening in this image? What do you think happened five minutes before this, and five minutes after this?’ We’ll try to spur them on, and the kids will raise their hand and come up with ideas.”

A variety of breeds are featured in Schmidt’s shoots, including quirky characters like Boston Terriers, French Bulldogs, and Corgis because of their eccentricities. But at the end of the day, his ideal model—the Labrador Retriever—lives in his own home. “Lewie is really a handsome Lab, and he works out well because he’s well trained and he’ll do anything for a slice of cheese, so he’s easy to work with.” To Schmidt, Labs are quintessential. “They are the perfect dog. It’s just a personal preference, but if you ask somebody to draw a dog, they’re going to draw a dog that looks like a Lab. They’re enthusiastic and supporting and adventurous, so they work well in lots of different things.” Although Lewie is Schmidt’s leading man, his brother, Moses the 150-pound Anatolian Shepard, chooses to stay far from the spotlight. “Moses is beautiful, he’s huge, he’s majestic, and awesome—but not great in front of the camera.”

Oftentimes, the addition of fun details in postproduction make for an even better picture. Take “Fluke” for example, a photo of a serene nautical Pit Bull in a sailor’s hat and with an anchor tattoo on his chest. Another imaginative scene is “Labricorn,” which shows a Lab balancing an impossibly flawless rainbow cupcake upon his forehead. In some cases, it would be difficult to photograph a dog doing what Schmidt captures without a little help from Photoshop, but admittedly, some of the best shots happen without modern technology. In his piece titled “Adventurers,” two Labradors, a sleek black one with his sunny golden counterpart travel down a river in a wooden canoe, complete with their own paddle. “We weren’t even working with digital with that image, it was all shot on medium-format film. We try to source any kind of prop we can to save time, but in this case, I could not find a canoe that was wooden that looked like that. So, I built one in my basement. But it’s basically built for photography only, so it’s a half a canoe that has no back, no bottom, and is sitting in only two inches of water. It’s in the river, it’s just not moving,” Schmidt explains with a laugh.

Until he found his niche, Schmidt assisted photographers in New York City, working mostly in the fashion industry and taking celebrity portraits. He stumbled upon dog-centric conceptual art by chance. One year, while working for advertising companies, the Schmidts sent out a Christmas card to their family, friends, and clients. “We just had our dog on it, and it was by far the most popular thing our clients had seen. The dog resonated with them well beyond anything else that I’d done. [Amy and I both] thought, ‘I think we’re onto something here.’” After setting an intention to really give it his all, Schmidt created six more conceptual images of dogs that clients fell in love with—and the rest is history.

Around two decades and thousands of photos later, Schmidt now calls Hallmark, Scholastic, and even The US Postal Service, major clients. “You work with companies that license your work, and they pay you a royalty based on their sales.” Aside from making great connections in the licensing world, another industry called their name: publishing. After being approached by Penguin Random House, Schmidt’s photos were turned into the children’s book, Dog-Gone School, with Amy writing poems to accompany each one.

Together, the Schmidts have not only perfected the art of photographing dogs, but also combining work with marriage. “I love that awesome teamwork, or partnership. And people are always shocked. They’re like, ‘How do you two work together? I’d kill my husband!’ But we’re very lucky. We’re best friends, and it works really well.” And it’s been working that way for more than two decades. The blend of visual creativity, along with Amy’s quippy, relatable words, keeps the magic of their business flowing. Formulating captions such as “Obedience School,” to go with a photo of mischievous pups looking out the back of a yellow school bus, is Amy’s specialty. A snapshot of a baby English Bulldog, frowning because the ice cream shop behind him is closed, is named “That’s Bull,” tying it all together. “Amy has the tricky responsibility or job to write to my photos. She’s bound to writing within this kind of area, which is hard. But she’s really a great writer. She does all the social media writing and all that stuff. I’m the visual, and she is the textuals.”

Schmidt’s continual inspiration comes from his real-life appreciation for canine creatures and the power they can have over people. “I’m a dog fanatic and a dog nut, and I’ve never lost that. I’ll still, to this day, think about that when I’m out with my dogs walking around downtown or the woods or whatever. Dogs are really special, and I just love them. I wish everyone had one because, it’s so funny, the people that don’t really know or appreciate dogs are people that have never had them. And once you’ve had a dog, you realize how special and wonderful they are.” And it is that love that will continue to launch endless magical stories for the world to enjoy.

See more of Ron’s photography at WWW.RONSCHMIDT.ART