Biofuelled Paper Shredder

With identity theft becoming commonplace it's more important than ever to make sure that you destroy documents containing personal information before disposing of them in the bin. Paper shredders are the usual solution, but they often leave your documents in a state where they could be reconstructed given enough patience and time. For complete peace of mind, you need the Beagle Shred-O-Matic.

The Beagle Shred-O-Matic has the following advantages over traditional, electrically powered paper shredders:

• Easy to use. Just deposit your important documents in a place where no other dog could possibly reach them, and turn your back for a few seconds. The Shred-O-Matic will retrieve the documents and begin the destruction process automatically!
• Environmentally friendly - runs on biofuel!
• All documents are coarsely shredded within a minute. Given a little more time, the Shred-O-Matic will employ enzymatic agents (also known as saliva and stomach acid) to further destroy the paper. Once fully processed the destroyed material is ejected from the rear waste port in a compact, biodegradable form. Rest assured that no-one, not even the most determined identity thief, will want to retrieve your documents after that!

Note: the shredding process sometimes generates unusual sounds. Do not be alarmed - this is part of the Shred-O-Matic's normal function.

 

 

This chocolate smells funny...

My mother has rather bad dementia, and resides in a care home. We always take Beanie along on our visits to see her - Beanie gets loads of attention and cuddles, and my mum and all the other old folks really seem to brighten up while she's there. We watch Beanie like a hawk though. Why? Well it's not because as a pup she's quite likely to pee if she gets really excited. The residents have christened the carpets plenty of times already - one little doggy puddle isn't going to make much difference. Nope, the real worry is that there might be a stray pill or other toxin hiding under furniture which Beanie could swallow. So if it looks like she's got something in her mouth, I investigate immediately. Fortunately, our little pup is normally quite happy to let me open her mouth and fish around in there with my fingers.

Ok, so here's the scene. We're on a visit, and we've brought Mum some chocolates. Chocolate is toxic to dogs, so we're watching her carefully to make sure she doesn't try to feed any of them to Beanie. We stop by her room, and while we're sitting chatting Beanie goes on her usual nasal reconnaissance mission. Suddenly she picks up a scent and crawls underneath the bed. When she emerges, there's something in her mouth. I grab her and pry her jaws open. Whatever it is, it must be really tasty because Beanie's fighting to keep hold of it. Eventually I get a finger behind it and flick it out, and Susan and I study the object as it sits on the carpet.

Me: "It could be a stone"

Susan: "Is it a chocolate?"

Then a horrible thought enters my mind. I try to dismiss it, but... I have to be sure. I raise my fingers to my nose and sniff.

Yep. You guessed it. Four letters, ends in "IT" and is found at the bottom of bird cages. No - not "grit", the other thing. And the worst of it is that this didn't come out of Beanie's rear end. It has to be my own mother's bottom sausage.

There's a pause while I process what's just happened, then I fall into a routine that I've done countless times since getting Beanie. I reach into into my coat pocket, extract a poop bag, stick it on my hand, pick up "the thing that is not chocolate" and close up the bag. A trip to the bin and a really thorough hand wash and it's all over.

The good thing is that my Mum was none the wiser about the incident. The bad thing is that I'm going to need therapy. Lots of it.

Smackdown!

After her bitter defeat in the boxing ring, Beanie has switched to professional wrestling. Her first bout - against Mowgli, a 4 month old St. Bernard with a huge weight advantage - could not have gone better:

L-L-L-Let's Get Ready To RUMBLE!

Although she's young (around 4 months) and still quite small, Beanie has a very strong personality and regularly gets the better of other dogs. For example, not long after we got Beanie we took her round to a friend's house to meet their dog Sophie. Sophie's a medium sized, adult mongrel with a lovely nature and plenty of confidence when in her own territory. However, within two minutes our little madam had claimed Sophie's bed as her own and chewed a hole in it.

But it's not easy being top dog. Everyone's after your title and sooner or later some cocky young punk is going to catch you with a lucky shot. And that's exactly what happened at the park today. We met up with a Spaniel cross pup called Ruby, and after the usual pre-fight negotiations and weigh-in, the action started. Since Sky Sports own the TV rights to the fight, I'm afraid you'll have to make do with my blow-by-blow account and some ringside stills.

In the first round, there was lots of eye contact, with each fighter trying to psyche out her opponent.

The second round saw some superb head shots from the reigning champ. Check out this stunning left hook:

In the third round, things got messy. Unlike the the pampered champ, Ruby didn't have a pedigree. She'd come up from the streets and wasn't afraid to get down and dirty to get the win. When the opportunity presented itself, she snook in a "Tyson" special

The ref quickly stopped the round and ordered both fighters back to their corners for treats (cheese and pieces of apple in this case). However, Beanie never seemed to recover and in round four she was on the receiving end of some punishing blows:

Eventually, the red furred upstart landed the finishing blow and Beanie lost her crown by TKO:

Just in case you're thinking the ear-biting incident looked a bit vicious, don't worry! Both pups had a whale of a time playing with each other, and we headed back to the car assuming that we'd have a nice quiet afternoon while our ex-champ got her beauty sleep. How wrong we were, because Beanie was still full of beans. She saw an older dog running with a stick and decided that it should be hers. After several laps of the course, it was!

By the time we finally left the park, we had a very muddy pup!

Eyes down for a full house!

This morning started like any other. I dragged myself out of bed, opened Beanie's crate, and patiently waited for our little furball to emerge. As usual, the waking process began with a big yawn, followed by a long stretch that ended with her front paws poking out of the crate and making tentative contact with the carpet. Then she reached out further with her front legs and slowly dragged her body forward. As her rear approached the lip of the crate she didn't bother to engage her back legs. Nope, the lazy little bugger just kept on inching forwards until her bum fell out of the cage and hit the deck. Then she just lay there, waiting for me to pick her up and rush out to the garden before Nature could take its course. And this morning, Nature had a big surprise for me.

After her pee, Beanie circled, sniffed and squatted for her "Number Two". I could tell it was going to be a big one: a cloud of steam emerged from under Beanie's tricolor arse as hot jobby met frozen grass. When Beanie finally stood up, I clicked my clicker and bent down to give her a treat (Beagle house training 101) but she immediately shifted position and squatted again. Blimey, a double!

I gave her the treat anyway and readied the poop bag. She stood up, moved a couple of inches and sank her bum back down. Yes folks, that's three Number Twos in a single session, and it made the scooping process even more challenging than usual. It's bad enough trying to get your polythene covered hand round one jobby while keeping your lighter and friskier Beagle from standing in it - or even worse - having a quick nibble of it, but three jobbies!!??**!

Once the bag was closed it was safe to breath again, but rather than chucking it straight in the bin, I allowed the fresh Beanie poop to warm my hands for a couple of seconds. Who needs gloves when you've got a Beagle?

Lessons re-learned

Earlier in this very blog I declared that we'd use regular short term confinement in the crate as part of our housetraining plan. Despite all our good intentions we didn't stick to that plan - at least not during the day - and we've been paying the price.

Our little Beanie just doesn't seem to know when she's tired. She keeps on going past the point where other pups would flake out and nap. Just like a child, the more tired she gets, the more cranky she gets. In the space of an hour she turns from our very gentle, fun loving puppy into a play-junky, frantically running from toy to toy in a bid to get a bigger fix. When the toys don't deliver, she gets destructive and will even give us quite hard nips (those puppy teeth are like needles).

The solution seems to be more time in her crate. She sometimes protests at being crated, but after a few minutes sleep takes over and she's soon out cold. When she awakes, our sweet little pup is back. So that's the first thing we've learned: the advice on regular crating isn't just for potty training - it helps ensure that a puppy gets the uninterrupted sleep it needs.

And the second lesson? Well the housetraining seemed to be going so well that we stopped using treats to reward each successful loo visit in our garden. We figured extravagant praise would be enough, though Beanie didn't seem to respond to the praise all that much. Nothing changed for a day or two, but then we started having more and more accidents in the house. To get things back on track, we now have a "potty kit", comprising of a poop bag, a clicker and a little bag of freeze-dried liver. Each successful deposit in our garden is rewarded with a click and a small piece of what Dr. Ian Dunbar calls "the Ferrari of dog treats".

So overall, I guess there's no room for any complacency when you've got a puppy!

I came here to sniff ass and chew treats. And I'm all out of treats...

One thing we have been doing religiously is socialization. We're now regulars at the local park, and we approach just about every accompanied dog we see. If the owner says their dog is OK with pups, the meet and greet is on and much bottom sniffing swiftly ensues.

As you can see Beanie now has a little red coat to keep her warm during her daily sniff-athon. One of the seasoned dog owners we met advised us to get her one, and I'm really glad we did. It's getting really cold and wet just now (hey! what happened to global warming?) and without it Beanie soon starts shivering.

Also, on the repeated encouragement of other dog owners, we've been letting Beanie completely off lead during her park visits. It was quite scary the first time, but the other owners insisted that as a puppy she wouldn't stray far from us. Happily, they were right. This has given us the chance to do proper recall training, something that Beanie seems to handle very well, especially now she knows that "Beanie! Come!" means there's a tasty piece of cheese waiting for her. It's something we may have to revise when she's older and her tracking nose develops though...

Never trust a pig, especially if it's pink

On her park visits, Beanie now fearlessly approaches dogs several times her size. However, her first encounter with a four inch fluffy pink pig that goes "oink-oink" when squeezed was less than heroic. This porcine newcomer was eyed with deep suspicion. Beanie kept a safe distance, which in this case was about a yard (the pig only had very short legs but you never know how fast those things can move). Every time I inched the pig towards her, Beanie backed off. I tried food lures, I tried calling her, but still she wouldn't approach her new toy.

At first it was highly amusing, but then I sobered up. Some Internet sources suggest that pretty much anything a dog doesn't learn to handle as a puppy can become a major phobia as an adult dog. Somehow, I had to conquer Beanie's fear of little Miss Piggy! Crouching down on all fours, I lined up besides Beanie and very slowly crawled towards the pig. She began to follow me, so I paused to let her catch me up, then started my approach again. As we drew close to the pig, Beanie changed position. She backed up, then slunk between my legs, using me as a big portable doggy den. We made it to the pig, and very cautiously I pawed at it, rolling it into the "alpha" submissive position (I'd never do that with a puppy, but pink pigs are fair game). Beanie approached then sank back repeatedly, building up courage for her attack. When it came, it was perfectly executed. She went straight for the right ear, which as every Beagle knows is the most vulnerable area on a fluffy battery operated pig from Tescos. From that moment, the pig was doomed.

B-Day - the first 24 hours

Yesterday was Beanie-Day. Here are the gory details of our first 24 hours as beagle owners.

The Pickup

We visited the breeder's home in Carluke yesterday morning and on the way back we had Beanie, a big bag of puppy food, and a wallet full of pedigree, vaccination worming and feeding docs. The journey back to our place takes about 45 mins which is by far the longest car ride Beanie has ever had, so we were a little concerned about how she'd handle it. Those concerns quickly dissolved - Beanie sat calmly on my lap, looking out of the passenger window and enjoying a gentle cuddle. This was great - she'd been quite wriggly the first time I'd held her, but now she was totally relaxed in my company. Forty-five minutes in the car? No problem for our happy little pup!

Then about half way through she started yawning. Fine I thought - she's so relaxed she's going to have a nap in my arms. Then she started panting a bit. Fine - we had the heating up in the car quite high, and she was getting all hot from being close to me too. Then abruptly my happy little fantasy was washed away by a sea of brown, foul smelling barf. Beanie opened her innocent little mouth and unleashed a vomit tsunami all over my stomach, my groin, and the car seat. After this she felt much better and wanted to resume her cuddle, and even give me a nice barfy kiss. Aww, little sweetheart!

I spent the remainder of the journey trying not to wretch, and when we finally arrived home I exited the car like a six year old that had messed his pants big time. Susan took Beanie into the rear garden for a pee, while I indulged my desire for a shower and a change of clothes.

It ain't like this in the books

After the pee break in the garden, Susan prepared Beanie's first lunch in her new home - a scrambled egg with milk. Now clean and fresh smelling, I got Beanie's crate ready in the living room, along with a big paw-shaped bed we'd bought months earlier. I popped a few treats into a puppy Kong toy, and got ready to introduce our pup to her crate. The recommended way to do this is to get the puppy interested in the Kong, pop this into the crate and close the door - with the puppy still on the outside. After a minute or so, she should be desperate to enter the crate, and soon come to regard it as her den. At least that's what the books say.

In Beanie's case, the Kong was quite interesting while it was in my hands, but as soon as I put it in the crate and closed the door, she lost interest. Hmm... well so much for that approach.

I changed tack. I opened the crate, made a fuss of the Kong and Beanie wandered in. Great! Except she promptly picked up the Kong and took it straight to her paw bed. I tried the same thing with various other toys - a rubber chicken, a comforter that still had the smell of siblings on it - but each time she kept returning to the big paw. It wasn't that she was at all wary of the crate, it was just that the paw was clearly way more comfy.

A bit of lateral thinking produced the solution. We stuffed the paw into the crate, tossed in a couple of her toys and Bingo! One happy, cosy beagle in her crate.

Time for the Vet

The afternoon went pretty much without incident. Beanie kept wanting to join us on the sofa, but we held to the rule of not letting her on the furniture, using a mixture of distraction and Dog Whisperer style body language (the latter had mixed results - we're starting to see how important it is to have body language, intent and emotional state all working together consistently).

Pretty soon it was time for a visit to the vet. We'd booked a session some time ago to introduce Beanie and get a chance to ask the 1001 questions we had about chipping, health care, neutering and so on.

This time, there was no barfing in the car - which no longer smelled of vomit, thanks to some wonderful stain removing wipes from "Simple Solutions". (They come in packs of 12, and have a picture of a guilty looking beagle on the front - pure coincidence I'm sure).

Beanie was great at the vets - she was quiet and didn't fret or struggle once, which made us both very proud of her. There was no doubt in our minds that we'd got the most well behaved pup of the litter, a belief we shared with the vet staff. They exchanged knowing glances for some reason.

It's been a hard day's night...

When we got her home from the vets, she had a good long sleep to recharge her batteries. I guess they must have been on a very weak charge before because when she woke up, she was Bionic Beanie. Faster, stronger, peskier and well capable of causing six million dollars worth of damage if left unsupervised for more than a few seconds. Every so often she'd run out of juice and fall asleep, only to awaken with even more energy. Clearly she'd been a little subdued when we first brought her home, but now she was relaxing and settling in. A good sign, but extremely tiring!

Before long we decided to call it a night. I set up the crate in our bedroom, but in our exhausted state we decided against the "closed crate with scheduled toilet breaks" method. Instead, we fenced off a small corner of the room and put the open crate in there, along with a housetraining pad and a bowl of water. We'd been warned to expect some crying over the first few nights, and Beanie duly obliged, but this died away after a few minutes. Beanie woke us up a couple of times later in the night, but we assumed this was because she needed the loo. The first time, that was certainly the case. The second time, well either she was just bored and wanting a play, or she didn't quite need a pee enough to brave one of Glasgow's typical winter downpours. Regardless, she didn't leave any unwanted presents in the room, and didn't use the pad. Not a bad start at all!