Pet Spotlight: Freya

by Judy Quist

The Quist household is run by a 17lb Pug named Freya. At least, she thinks she runs the place. Pugs are often referred to as “multum in parvo,” which translates to “much in little” or “much in a small space.” Freya thinks she is a Great Dane or an Irish Wolfhound, despite the fact that she rises only about a foot off the floor. She believes herself to be worthy of being leader of the pack, or at the very least, of every bit of food she can get her flat nose into even if she’s been told it’s off limits (like the cat food, for example).
Freya joined our family in 2002 when she was just 10 weeks old.

She was a wedding present from my in-laws, who knew that my husband, Steve, had wanted to get a Pug for quite some time. (Given the fact that most of our Pfalzgraff has easily chipped, broken or rusted, and doesn’t warm our hearts nearly as much as our sweet Pug, I’d say Freya tops the list of best wedding gifts!) While anxiously waiting for the day we could pick her up from the breeder, we debated what to name our incoming family member. We perused a few pet name web sites and discovered one day that we were both fond of “Freya.” At the time Steve dabbled occasionally in a collectible card game called Warlord, and said he had a strange feeling his affection for the name “Freya” might be related to something in the game. He pulled out his deck and announced, “Ah! It must be fate. There’s a character named Freya and she’s the leader of a wolf pack.” We taped the character card to Freya’s dog crate, completely naïve at the time that Freya would, in fact, have the personality of a wolf pack leader.