My Little Puggle Dogs

Picking Out a Puggle

The puggle breed is fairly new (at least as an intentional breed anyway). Information on puggles was hard to come by and I thought it would be impossible to find a breeder in our area. But we pushed on. We searched for a few weeks. I think I called every animal shelter in the state. We searched all of the puppy finder websites. We couldn’t find a puggle in the Wilmington, North Carolina area or within 150 miles. I remembered that the woman on the beach had gotten her puggle in Montana and had him flown to her. I knew we didn’t want to go that route if it could be avoided.

I decided to start searching the classified ads for a puggle breeder. I googled “North Carolina Local Newspaper” and found a directory of online newspapers. I started from the top and worked my way down searching in the classified ads. Luckily, I didn’t have to search long, in the Concord paper, we found an advertisement for a hybrid breeder that had puggle puppies. Within hours, we were exchanging phone conversations and pictures of the available pups. It was soon clear that it would be a challenge to bring only one puppy home with us. They were all precious.

We decided we would make the 5 hour drive that day to pick up our new baby. We were so excited. I couldn’t believe Aaron and I were on the same page and we were getting a puppy. After we hit the road, caffeine charged for the long drive, I realized we were not completely on the same page. I wanted a girl puppy named Gracie (to match our cat names, Gladdy and Glitchy) and he wanted a boy puppy named Duke (bet you can guess what North Carolina team he loves). Another bump in the road.

Technically, the puppy is a gift from my parents for finally earning my Masters degree. But Aaron was prepared to buy all of the supplies (which we later found out add up to a hefty bill) to ensure that the puppy was ours and not just mine. So, I didn’t really have any leverage that the puppy was more mine than his thus having full rights over picking his or her sex and name. We called all of our animal loving friends to poll them as to which is the better sex for our new puppy. I would estimate that we heard a 50/50 split. It seemed that everyone favored the sex of the pet(s) they grew up with. This didn’t help our decision. We decided that we would watch the puppies from inside the crate and pick two based solely on their personalities and cuteness level (they were all so adorable so this method wasn’t very helpful in our decision) without knowing the sex of the puppies we choose. We quickly picked two puppies that were our favorites. When the owner pulled them out for us to hold, we realized we had picked a girl and a boy. After we held them for a while we realized that we liked the boy a little better. Both were cute but he was a bit more wrinkly and a bit older so we felt better about separating him from his brothers and sisters.

After a final puppy inspection by the vet tech, much instruction of health and crate training, and a bill of sale in hand, were were headed back on the road. As we we got in the car, turned the key, we were on the road with our new baby. Well, almost. We are bad parents already. We didn’t let our little puggle go to the bathroom before we hit the road. We weren’t even out of the driveway before we had one very big mess. Live and learn.

The 5 hour car ride was rough…many stops later we were finally home. Past 2am. We were ready to hit the sack…but was Duke? We had heard that a puppies first night at home would be restless for everyone. It was. None of us slept. Duke cried, Aaron cried, I cried. It was an awful sleepless night.

Posted under: Puggle Dogs, Finding a Puggle