Parker The Pug’s Blog - The ongoing saga of Parker the Pug and her younger sister Maggie the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Maggie and Parker go to the beach for the first time

By sarah

Maggie and Parker are pretty much all grown up now but they will always be our puppies and we are still enjoying watching them experiencing new things.

A few months ago when we were visiting Anthony’s parents in the Merseyside area, we decided to take them to the beach for the first time. I wasn’t sure how they were going to take to it but they both enjoy new things - particularly Maggie who can get easily bored - so I was looking forward to seeing their reactions to a totally new environment.

I was a bit worried that Parker would have a bit of trouble walking on the sand but my fears were unfounded because nearly as soon as we got to the sand she was running around like she didn’t have a care in the world.

I knew that Maggie would probably like the beach but I didn’t know she would like it as much as she did. The entire time she was acting like she was in paradise. She was loving getting wet and dirty and running around with all the other dogs. She kept stopping for a few seconds to let the wind (it was rather windy) blow through her hair.

She was especially enjoying playing with her cousin Jas (Anthony’s parent’s dog). They were really having fun and you can see it on Maggie’s face. She is trying to get Jas to run some more with her on the sand.

Parker was up to her own tricks and kept getting twisted around people’s legs when she was running around in circles. This time she has managed to get Anthony’s mum all tied up!

Parker did manage to take a breather and let me take a close up of her while she rested. I love the sand dotted all along her face. I also can’t help but compare this close up to the close ups I took of her the first day she was in our home. She is for certain a much more mature (but still really cute) pug now.

Every now and then Maggie and Parker were actually in the same place at the same time. This is one of my favourite pictures of them together. Take note of Maggie’s tongue. She kept drinking the salt water and by this time she was really feeling the effects of all that salt on her lips.

So, of course we had to give both of them a chance to drink up on some fresh water. Maggie was right in there to wash that salt water out of her mouth.

After the beach we took a walk through the wooded area next to the beach and before we started the walk back we gave the pups a chance to relax. I think it was safe to say that Parker was wiped out! It was like a little kid that had played for hours and then just dropped. Maggie slept the whole way home in the car - covered from head to toe in sand.

Just before we got back into the car, Parker met this bulldog puppy. The owner told us that she was only a few months old but my she was big and just look at the size of her paws! She looks like she is winning the stand off but really it was Parker that was making herself known and it was just trying to figure out why the pug wanted to get to know her.

The puppies and daddy

By sarah

Bringing Parker and Maggie into our home has really made our household feel like a family. Like any little girls our puppies have fallen for their daddy.

Maggie in particular has been Anthony’s little girl since the day she came home. She went right to him when she was put down on the floor and ever since she has been at her happiest when she is getting attention from him. Sitting on his lap ceratainly isn’t a rare thing. Contrast this picture to the picture in our first post about Maggie where she is being held in his hand. She really is a big girl now!

They do like spending time on his lap. However, Parker and Maggie both really enjoy it when their time spent with Anthony is a little bit more horizontal in nature.

Parker also enjoys it when Anthony lays down on the floor and allows her to use him as her climbing frame.

This is one of my faveorite sets of pictures. It perfectly captures the process of Parker becoming so relaxed after climbing on top of Anthony that she can’t help but fall asleep. Notice that Maggie has her place too - asleep between Anthony’s knees.

Going ….

Gone!

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Parker is looking pretty foxy too

By sarah

Parker is a charmer. Her wonderful pug facial expressions are enough to melt anyone’s heart. She also knows exactly how to strike a pose for the camera. She looks different from one picture to another but she always looks cute to us In contrast to Maggie, Parker spent the first few weeks with a breeder that really cared about the breed and it has shown in hwo good her health has been and how well she has progessed through the past months. Except for getting her shots and microchip, Parker hasn’t had a need for a trip to the vet at all. Long may that continue.

Here are some pictures of Parker the Pug looking particuarly foxy for the camera.

She has recently taking to demanding to be allowed to sit on my deskk for a few minutes each morning while I work. It makes it hard to type but has given me some good shots of her hamming it up.

Here is one picture of both of our puppies sitting nicely together. It only lasted for about 10 seconds but I managed to get it on camera. Our babies

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Maggie the spaniel getting bigger every day

By sarah

Puppies sure do grow fast but Maggie has really had a growth spurt as of late. We are really glad to see how big and strong she is becoming. When we brought her home she was a tiny little thing. To be honest, I wonder if the woman didn’t sell her to us a bit too young. When we picked her up we weren’t that impressed by the standards in which she had been living. The woman’s house smelled very strongly of cat urine and when she brought Maggie out to us she was shaking like a leaf. The woman said she was shaking because she had just given Maggie her first bath. Having since given Maggie many baths that may well be true because she does get very cold afterwards.

However, I don’t think that Maggie had been taught to eat properly. We spent the two weeks right after we had her going between having to feed her one bit of food at a time (as if she didn’t know how to eat) and cleaning up after her having some major digestive issues. She had been to the vet atleast four times in her first two weeks with us. We had worried that we shouldn’t have bought her from the lady given the conditions but I really couldn’t have left her there. Luckily, the shaking hasn’t at all proved to be signs of a timid dog - Maggie is anything but timid!

Like I said, she is growing up really fast. Here are some very recent pictures of Maggie looking her best for the camera. Compare these pictures with the previous pictures and you will see what we mean about her growth spurt.

This is Maggie showing off her latest ‘trick’. I turned around one day and Maggie was standing in the middle of the coffee table. She would only do it when it was just me in the room. So, this time when she did it I took a picture so the other’s would believe me. I felt like she was that singing and dancing frog from Warner Brothers that only ever danced for the one guy.

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Yikes..it has been a long time

By sarah

It has been a really long time since I updated this blog. I have been so busy being a mommy to Parker and Maggie that finding the time to sit down and update has been difficult. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been taking loads of pictures of my pug and spaniel babies. So, I am going to do a bunch of updates here. The two puppies really have grown a lot since the last update but I am going to start out with some pictures of when they were still pretty small. Then in the next posts we will jump to what they look like now.

It didn’t take too long for both Parker and Maggie to start to develop their own personalities. Parker is what we call the ’scardey puppy’. She is very confident in an environment that she knows well but doesn’t really like new places. Once she eventually gets to know the new enviroment she is fine but she does take a while to feel comfortable. She is however, very perceptive and has picked up on the patterns of our behaviour very quickly. She learned very early that if it is fairly late at night and I pick up a toy and throw it into their cage that she will very shortly be put into the cage for the night. Parker doesn’t actually mind being in the cage but she doesn’t like the process of going into it. Part of her personality has been that she doesn’t like to miss anything going on around her and it comes across to us that she knows that if we put her into the cage she will be missing some events overnight. So, within a few weeks of Parker being in our home she started to run and hide under the couch the moment I put the toy in the cage.

Here are some pics I took when she ran and hid under the couch when I was trying to put her in for the night.

This became such a nightly routine of trying to lure her out from under the couch that we eventually had to find a way to block off the underside of the couch so she couldn’t get too far underneath when hiding.

Maggie on the other hand, is the cheeky one. When we first brought her home, I said I saw attitude in those eyes and boy was I right. She is a wonderful puppy but she does like to find trouble to get into and has been a real chewer. We have had to block off almost every wire we have in the house - even those we didn’t really know we had - to stop her getting to them. She just sees them as a challenge and she doesn’t want to fail. When there isn’t a wire to chew she teases Parker. Parker really loves it too so they both get something out of it.

Here is an early picture of Maggie sneaking up behind Parker and pulling on her collar.

The one personality trait they both share is their love for their toys. The most popular puppy toys in the house are:

Wacky DucK - Wacky Duck has since become a one legged (lame duck?) because Maggie had taken apart the threaded leg to the point that it was just a bunch of strings. That is simply too dangerous for a puppy (especially a chewer like Maggie) So, I had no choice but to do the opperation.

Punk Monkey - Punk Monkey has been a house faveorite since I brought him home. Sadly, he has also had to have a leg amputated for the same reason as Wacky Duck.

Empty water bottles - this we found out by accident. One day I put a half empty water bottle down on the floor next to the sofa and Parker started barking like mad at it like it was her worst enemy. So, we emptied it out and threw it down for her to sniff around. Well, Parker was still scared of it at first but Maggie jumped right in and started beating it up. Ever since she goes mental when I have an empty water bottle and doesn’t calm down until I let her play with it.

Fuzzy Orange Bone - It squeaks..enough said.

The last few months with Parker the pug and Maggie the Spaniel has been a bunch of hard work but our lives are so much better for having them in it. Plus, how can you not think all the hard work is worth it when you get to look at these faces every morning?

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Parker Gets A Younger Sister

By sarah

We always planned on getting to puppies fairly close together but we had no idea we would be getting them within the same week! However, when I was checking through a website that lists puppies for sale in the UK and saw that a lady not too far from us had one female puppy left out of a litter of 8 and I figured I would give her a call. The very next day we were on our way to meet and pick up Parker’s new little sister.

Meet Maggie the 8 week old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. When we first met her she was very nervous and was shaking like a leaf so we were a bit worried that maybe she was going to be too timid. I really don’t think we have much to worry about though because she has only been here a little over 24 hours and she is starting to romp around the house.

Here is cute picture of Maggie being cuddled by Anthony when she first came home. She is a lot better at sitting still than Parker but once she gets going getting her to stop is the challenge.

She is a Tri Colour Cavailer which means she is black and white with tan markings over her eyebrows and a little bit on her cheeks.

Parker was only here a week before Maggie but it is clear that Parker is certain in her mind that this house is her domain. She is fascinated by the new puppy but wants to play just a little bit too roughly at times. There is only two weeks between them but Parker is much more solidly built. So, even though in her mind she is just jumping on Maggie to play it can be a bit worrying that her weight is just a bit too much for Maggie. Plus Parker has developed an obsession for Maggie’s tail. She spent her life before us in house full of pugs. So, our theory us that she has never seen a long tail wagging before.

Here is a picture if us introducing Parker and Maggie to each other. You can tell Parker is already egar to get a closer look.

Maggie isn’t a total pushover though. Now that she is warming up she has been know to be the one on top in the puppuy wrestling matches.

Beyond the new arrival it has been busy day for Parker. She started out her day with a visit to our vets to get her microchip in while Maggie got her first round of shots. Then she had her very first bath in the sink. She wasn’t too sure of what to make of it but her and Maggie were more than happy to run around shaking off around the house before having their first nap on the bed with me.

Here are two wet puppies who now smell a whole lot better.

I’ll leave you with a few more pictures of Maggie from her first day with us. Some of them I took just now as I was typing this blog entry. I had to put her down so I could type with two hands for a minute.

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Parker Finally Comes Home!

By sarah

Sometimes it felt like the day would never come but on the evening of April 2nd, Parker finally came home to be with us. I had a buisness trip to the States for the two weeks before picking her up but I couldn’t wait to get her so we got off the 10 hour flight from Arizona to London at 2pm our time and by 7:30 we were on our way to pick her up. I figured that I would be jetlagged and awake if she needed me during the night.

However, I could have just slept all the way through because she slept through the night and didn’t cry once! I was told by many people not to expect that for a while down the road.

My digital camera has been working overtime over the last couple of days so I have a ton of pictures but I will keep them down to a few here so that I don’t really slow down the blog.

This is a picture of Parker having her first meal at home. I guess it is safe to say pugs aren’t picky eaters because she dived right in!

It feels like she has really taken to us. I don’t know if the fact that we saw her and held her before she even opened her eyes would have made a difference (perhaps she remembers our smells?) but she hasn’t shown any nervousness with us. She took right away to her bed downstairs. Even though she has filled it up with pleanty of her toys. She likes rolling around on her back and trying to stretch out to take it over.

I love this pic of her hanging out of the bed because I caught her mid-play.

And I will leave you with two slightly less silly pictures. It has been hard to get her to sit still long enough to take a face shot so when I managed to get these two I figured I would share them.

We are very glad to finally have her home.

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The final countdown beings

By sarah

Ah…we are now only a month away from taking Parker home. It still feels like it is forever away but we have a two week trip to the States in a couple of weeks and we are picking her up the day we get back so with any luck those two weeks will go a lot faster than the past month has gone.
We have just about the supplies we need. After much chasing of an ebay seller Parker’s crate finally arrived. In addition to that we have her bed, toys, food and water bowls, grooming supplies and puppy pads. All we pretty much need are a few puppygates and a collar. Hopefully I can pick her up a nice collar in the States.

The good news is that we are going to get to see Parker for the first time since we picked her out on this Sunday. We have to go down to pay the rest of the balance to the breeder and that means we will be seeing her. It will be good to see how big she has grown and give me a chance to measure her for a collar. We will be sure to take pleanty of pics!

It appears that getting a puppy is contagious. Since we told our family about Parker my mother and my sister both have purchased puppies. They bought two female minature dachshunds at the same time with one going to my sister’s home and one going home with my parents. It took them forever to name them but after running through many different names they finally picked Peanut (who my sister Bekky says is her nutty buddy) and Lilly (who my mother says is very femmine so needed a femmine name). As soon as I have a few pictures of them I will post them and keep everybody updated on Parker’s American cousins.

Speaking of pictures here are the latest two of Parker.

You just have to love the cute little face in this one:

In this one she looks like she is a bit bored with posing and wants to run off and play:

We will post more after we see her on Sunday!

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Parker is a strange name for a girl

By sarah

I keep hearing that from people and I can understand why they would think that. The name Parker has featured a lot in my life. Most importantly it is my mother’s maiden name but even on a lighter note my Cabbage Patch kid was called Parker Marsh..lol. It is obviously the family connection rather than the doll that influenced the name choice for Parker. I am unlikely to bring any other Parker into the Parker family so I thought it would be a good enough name for my four legged baby

Plus, us Parkers tend to be short, stout and full of personality. So, it felt that Parker was the perfect name for a pug

The family that has Parker at the moment has sent us a number of new pictures. Here of the rest of the ones we have at the moment:

This is my favourite picture of Parker to date. She just looks so sweet and happy in her sleep:

This picture is pretty precious too. This is Parker with one of her sisters. Parker is the one with her paw up.

This is the latest of the Parker pictures to come our way. Appartently Parker enjoys sleeping on her back. What a sweetie!

The first couple of days of April when we bring her home can’t come fast enough!

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