It must be National Dog Fight Week and no one told us.
The potential pug came over yesterday. She's cute and smart and has a healthy unpuglike conformation, like a lot of snout and actual nostrils. She and the foster mom hung around for about an hour and a half. We went on a walk, then we sat and talked while the two pugs walked around the house. They seemed to be doing fine - Rose was pretty much unmoved as far as we could tell. So I said, OK, and we sat down and started to go through the contract and literally as I was initialing stuff on the second page Rose lost her shit and attacked her.
The foster mom said that she has an elderly cranky pug and the pup has learned to totally leave her alone, so she suggested I try keeping the pup for a week or so and see how it goes before we decide. So that's what we're doing.
I figured I could make it work and see if they get used to each other because the foster said she slept in a crate and I also have a lot of options with baby gates for various rooms. Well first of all I discover this long-legged sport model of pug can jump both the baby gates. Then I put her to sleep in the crate - after having her in and out of it successfully all day - and she pretty much whined the whole night, also with some barking. I finally got into a situation where I couldn't hear it and got a little sleep, but now I'm totally sleep deprived and trying to manage these two pugs, see if they are going to get used to each other without hurting each other, and get some minimal amount of work done.
The thing is that Rose seems to have some dementia, and she's blind. So it's not just normal correcting the puppy behavior. So the puppy's not reacting the way it reacted to the foster's cranky old pug correcting it.
There was one fight this morning and since then it's been a truce. But I'm starting to think it's unfair to the old pug in her golden years to do this, even if I were willing to put in the work.