Happy Birthday Furface!

Little Paulie Walnuts is 2 years old today. Paulie is a purebred, wirehair miniature dachshund. My husband purchased him from a breeder in California as a wedding gift to me. I wanted another dachshund - there was nothing wrong with the one I already had, mind you, doxies just lend themselves well to groups. I really wanted a wheaten female to name Saucy after my favorite childhood book, but there were none available. Instead, the breeder told my husband that she had a wild-boar male that was "very sweet". She was partially right.
Paulie came home to us the day before we returned from our honeymoon. Our in-laws picked him up and kept him the first night. They also were watching Indy (our black & tan doxie)...who was "not very nice" to the puppy. As you might be able to see from his picture above, he had some blonde fur, with a wirey overlay of black and red...true wild boar coat. He was very sweet...the breeder was right about that. But what we soon discovered after a botched first haircut was that he wasn't a true wild-boar-coated doxie.

The groomer was instructed to cut (by hand!) the knots out of his fur and then just give him a trim to remove the fuzzies. What we received back a few hours later was not our multi-colored boy - instead we received a VERY blonde boy with the softest, curliest blonde fur. He was a wheaten! Granted, he was shaved and had to look like a dork for about 3 months while his fur grew out...but it's still blonde today. He has some black fur on his ears and tail, so he's not a true wheaten...but close enough.
We were batting around a few names for him before he came home. When we finally got him home and saw the little silver wisps of fur above his ears, we knew that we had to name him after our favorite Sopranos character - and so Paulie Walnuts Gaultieri Funk was official.

He is very attached to Indigo and loves to play with Indy whenever he'll let him. Both older dogs tolerate him - but to my husband and I he is a sweet clown of a dog and we love him so much!