"True Furry Friends Thru The Years" - Time Out #113

Spanky and Tux are their names.

These little bundles of joy are the newest members of our 2-person, empty-nest family

Spanky is a male, multicolored, French Bulldog puppy, and Tux is a younger, male, pug puppy.

Interesting names?

Spanky's handle comes from my youthful, 1950's years, growing up in Our Town during those simpler/gentler times. I spent many hours in front of our living room black and white television set, closely watching "The Little Rascals" (i.e., "Our Gang") . The "Gang" consisted of many memorable children characters, including their fiery leader, Spanky.

Our little Frenchie certainly lives up to his name in our homestead, continually running the show with his much smaller partner, Tux.

Tux was actually named by the family in Wichita, KS, where we drove and purchased the little bundle of joy in early October. Appropriately, he is almost totally black, with a prominent white blaze on his chest, and both front feet strikingly white, too. Yes, he looks like he is wearing a black tuxedo, with a white shirt and white gloves, dear readers. Of course, he is cute!

Why 2 young puppies acquired within a week of each other to run around our home?

Simply put, we wanted the playful canines to not get lonesome, and to have a "brother" to grow up with, and share the years ahead.

Wow, this an huge undertaking, mostly for my bride, Debbie, who is the principle caregiver. In fact, she has done 95+% of the effort in keeping up with our young gang.

We have had 7 pugs over the last over 20 years, which also had two of our females, Baby and Sadie, give birth to 20 puppies between them in 3 total litters. Therefore, we have experienced puppies and all their needs and demands, but it has been many years ago. And, believe it or not, Ms. Debbie and I are older now than we were at those earlier times!

Our burning desire to add new, 4-legged members to our small family had been in the works for several months, Early in the 2017 Spring, we lost our old father/son, adopted, black male pugs, Sam and Amos. Their loss, only 40 days apart, created the first dog-void in our family in almost 35 years. You might even say we are animal lovers, and you would be spot-on correct!

Even though we continued our numerous travel outings, without any faithful dogs waiting for us to return home, we would regularly search various media outlets for puppies we might purchase, The Frenchie choice was my idea, as I have loved the breed for several years now, and, as previously mentioned, the pug breed is totally imbedded in the Breedlove family DNA. Both these breeds produce incredibly cute puppies, and are over-the-top with seemingly endless energy.

My bride is continually puppy-proofing our new home, attempting to crate-train the duo so they do their "business" outside, and has filled several of our rooms with dog toys to keep the youngsters' attentions.

We have also recently made alterations in our backyard, by adding a fence to hopefully keep some of nature's wild criiters out of a small area, and Spanky and Tux inside the relatively safe enclosure.

Yes, we have taken on quite a "parental" responsibility, raising for the colorful youngsters.

The family memories we make will be wonderful to recall in our mind's eye forever.