It rained heavily and without pause for most of today, leading to a sub-par main dog walk and no play time in the garden. Result? Hyperactive Beagles, especially Beanie. Suddenly my desk was no longer off-limits, whether I was sitting at it or not.

Getting bolder. I’m sat at my desk but she still has to investigate

Looks like I could be about to lose my network connection

Eventually I’d had enough. I handed out the one punishment that our little girl fears above all others: I grabbed her, cuddled her in front of the window in full view of the neighbors (huge loss of street cred) and blew a raspberry in her tummy. It sort of worked, in that she stopped invading my work area while I was present, but there were two undesirable side effects:

• I had Beagle hairs on my tongue for ages afterwards
• She still snook up onto my desk whenever my back was turned, and when I eventually caught her in the act she made a desperate bid to escape a further raspberrying, sending everything flying.

The outbreak of naughtiness wasn’t confined to my desk of course.

Here’s that box you were looking for..

Towel wars!!!

In our house merely opening the cupboard that holds all the dog food causes a stampede. Wherever they are – regardless of whether they’re apparently fast asleep, raiding my sock drawer or tearing up newly delivered mail – they come running to see what nice thing they’re about to get. If that nice thing is a chew, then there’s another stampede as soon as they get it, because as everyone knows you can’t eat a chew just anywhere.

By far the favorite chew consumption area is a corridor by our bedroom. I guess they like it because it’s a safe secluded place. Biggles prefers to be right down at the farthest end, behind Beanie, but that causes problems because when he finishes his chew first, he’s trapped. The only way out of the corridor is past Beanie, and he’s not at all keen about passing close to her when she’s eating a chew. Being Biggles, he’s not content to just wait patiently for the two minutes it’ll take her to finish, so he woofs loudly to request an escort. To get peace, either Susan or myself has to literally provide him with a human shield so that he can pass safely through the Beanie danger zone.

As a workaround I recently tried handing Beanie her chew first, then motioning Biggles into the lounge and delivering his chew in there. My thinking behind this was: 1) he might just eat the chew in the lounge, and in any case 2) Beanie has by this time already taken up residence in the corridor, effectively blocking it. Either way, the problem is solved right? Wrong. Biggles scampered round the lounge frantically trying different candidate chew eating locations. Clearly none of them were any good because he then shot past me out of the lounge and straight down to the end of the corridor, passing a happily munching Beanie on the way! There he was finally able to consume his treat. And of course he still finished it first, found himself trapped at the dead end of the corridor and woofed loudly for an escort. Again.

Thanks to my experience with Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy games I immediately understood what had transpired. Clearly Biggles’ chew had been a magical item, temporarily rendering its holder immune to tellings-off from one’s sister. That’s right, Biggles had found the legendary Chew Of Invulnerability [single use]. With the chew in his mouth he’d been able to march past Beanie safely, but once it had gone he’d had no choice but to call for assistance.

Behold the magical Chew of Invulnerability. Note that once the chew has been consumed its protection expires and the user is once again at risk of severe grumpage, albeit with a slightly a fuller tummy

The crazy thing about all this is that Beanie has never actually grumped at Biggles for passing close by her while she’s eating; she’s oblivious to most things when something edible is actually between her jaws. In fact our two are getting on particularly well at the moment. There haven’t been any fall-outs in the house and outside play has been great, with much chasing and even a high-speed variant of hide-and-seek where each of them dives behind bushes and hillocks to throw the other off the trail.

I guess it doesn’t have to make any sense. It’s just one of those little Bigglisms that makes living with our two monkeys so.. interesting..

Britain’s been doing quite well in the Olympics but we’d be doing even better if the powers that be would only embrace some of the lesser known sports such as Boinging.

For the uninitiated, Boinging involves repeated pogo-stick style jumping in order to retrieve a target object from a high up place. It’s Biggles’ favorite sport, and he was training hard this morning when Susan left a plateful of cheese-covered toast crusts on the kitchen worktop.

It’s a surprisingly technical sport with marks being given for each of the four main stages of the boing.

Stage 1: Counter-surfing. Given only one brief peek, the contestant must correctly identify the high value item(s)

Stage 2: The launch. The contestant makes repeated standing jumps at the target directly from the floor and without the aid of any external apparatus

Stage 3: The snatch. On gaining sufficient height the contestant gathers all they can in a single mouth action

Stage 4: Speed eating. You only get points for what actually makes it into your stomach, so expert boingers like Biggles begin the consumption process even before their feet are back on the ground.

And there it is, the medal we could have if only the International Olympic Committee would add Boinging to their list of official sports