Yep, the Beanster has had a little fall out with Biggles again. It’s nowhere near as bad as the bust up they had in February last year, but we’ve gone back to the nothing-in-life-is-free programme for a week or two to nip it in the bud. It’s working already, but we’ve been scratching our heads trying to work out the reason for this latest “domestic”. Only a couple of things have changed recently that might be to blame:

1. Over Christmas they’ve been spoiled for attention, and there have been some small signs of jealousy over who’s getting cuddles from whom.
2. We’ve been giving them some short but very exciting off-lead romps

We’re leaning towards #2 being the most likely cause. When we get into the enclosure we typically play recall games rather than simply letting them do their own thing. Beanie takes these very seriously because treats are involved, whereas Biggles is mostly interested in trying to kick-off a play session.

What’s more, Biggles may now be able to run faster than his sister. In the past, she was the undisputed top athlete of the family, but now that could be changing. It’s not so apparent in chases in the garden, where Biggles still uses his one tactical brain cell to outwit Beanie rather than simply trying to out-pace her, but in a straight recall sprint, he’s now taking the lead:

In the last couple of sessions I did notice her looking a bit displeased with The Bigglet, and a day or two later this spilled over into a more serious quarrel. So for the time being the off-lead sessions are going off the menu, and both Beanie and Biggles are facing tougher austerity measures than those imposed on Greece. Much tougher. In fact any time the Greeks feel like complaining about cuts and tax rises they should think themselves lucky that they don’t have to nap in their baskets instead of on the sofa, or give a paw before coming in from the garden.

Those photos might lead you to believe that Biggles is the naughtiest of the two, but that’s not the case; he’s just the least accomplished at scarpering from the scene of the crime before we arrive. Nope, Beanie’s the criminal mastermind! She’s smart enough to take advantage of moments of opportunity, then quickly leg it when she’s about to be discovered. For example, if we get distracted by the sound of Biggles rolling around in the corridor with a glove he’s just nicked, she’ll have her snout stuck in a cup or be pilfering stuff from my desk in a flash. Between them it sometimes feels like we’ve got a house full of Beagles instead of just two.

Three Beanies to two Biggleses. Yep, that ratio feels about right..

And yet, for all that, they can be remarkably well behaved when they want to – which is pretty much whenever there’s food at stake. Here’s a quick clip of the current breakfast time routine:

Breakfast-time discipline from Paul Roberts on Vimeo.

This short exercise is kind of a fusion of various training ideas. Obviously self-control is always a good thing for a Beagle, while hand-feeding is supposed to underline the position of the humies at the top of the pile (since they control the food). The “pushing” thing – making the dog push against a hand on the chest, comes from so-called “natural training” and is supposed to teach the dog to turn to their owner in times of excitement/stress. As a side-effect, this routine also seems to be making Beanie more accepting of cuddles and kisses, and as you can see Biggles’ tail does a fair job of sweeping the floor too.

Kibble on paws, but no-one’s snacking until they’re told. Beanie meditates on both pieces at once; Biggles is strictly a one-kibble-at-a-time boy

The two weeks of NILIF (nothing in life is free) were up some time ago but we’ve kept going with much of it, because together with the various self control exercises it’s worked wonders for bringing our two Beagles into line. We’re still hand-feeding them (it’s nice for them and us) and they still have to sit and/or perform a trick when crossing a boundary, but we are now inviting them up onto the sofa and into our bed for a cuddle.

Back in our bed on a morning, just where a Bigglet should be!

The aggression Beanie showed to Biggles seems to be thoroughly behind us now, though our boy still seems to lack confidence in some situations. We’re working to build him up, but we need to do so selectively because he is after all a Beagle boy; give him an inch and he’ll grab & tug it until it’s considerably longer, and probably full of holes.

They say it’s much easier to tell a mischievous Beagle to do something good than to stop doing something naughty, and I think that’s why the discipline of the baskets works so well. It took a bit of firm handling and patience, but now we can put a stop to lots of troublesome behavior simply by sending them to their baskets. Finally we can have TV dinners in peace, yet still invite our pups up for a cuddle when we’re ready!

The benefits of the NILIF programme have also spilled over into our agility training. Beanie is much less likely to go off on a poo hunt at the start of each session, while Biggly Boy is now able to follow commands at a greater distance and is very close to weaving unaided.

Biggles loves jumping almost as much as Beanie now!

And jumps are great for other things too :)

Beanie has her eyes fixed on the next obstacle as she slinks over the jump

The only thing that isn’t quite back on track is play between Beanie and Biggles. Having said that, they’re having lots of play sessions with us right now so maybe they don’t need to let off steam with chases and wrestling on their own. Also despite the odd clear day we’ve had a lot of rain lately, and Beagles generally don’t like getting wet. Getting smelly and disgusting: yes, getting rained on: no. Anyway, hopefully they’ll return to playing together as we head into spring and summer and they spend more time together in the garden.

A fully chilled Bigglet, for the first time in several days

From our description of recent events and past Beanie/Biggles behavior, and from her own careful observation of our two in their home, Heather agreed with us that Beanie’s attacks all seemed to have a resource motive, and prescribed a two week course of NILIF – Nothing In Life Is Free.

In a way this programme applies almost as much to us as to our Beagles. Beanie and Biggles will now have to perform a trick or other desirable behavior for just about every good thing in their lives, even things like being released from their crates. The flip side of this is that we have to be vigilant toll-keepers and not leave anything lying around (toys, plates, cups etc) that our pups could get for free. Treats, cuddles, strokes and other demonstrations of affection only happen when we decide they’re appropriate, not when Beanie and Biggles come looking for them, and all doggy meals will be hand-fed rather than served up in a bowl. As an aside I rather suspect that Biggles and most especially Beanie will see the hand feeding as a huge and unexpected reward rather than a restriction. During her puppyhood she once went on hunger strike and would only accept the very tastiest morsels from our fingers; after all, bowls are for commoners! Still, it’s in the programme and we’ll stick to it. Also in the programme is a temporary ban on access to the sofas and our beds, and on play sessions between Beanie and Biggles, but they can play with us. In fact Heather showed us a tuggy game designed to increase our two Beagles’ self-control and help them quickly calm down from an excited state. We’ve needed something like that for them for a while, and it’s fun for us too.

To ensure that Beanie and Biggles recognize that we are both equally in charge we’ll now be swapping dogs on a regular basis. This will make our next agility lesson very interesting; I’ll have to be much faster with my verbal commands and footwork when I’m handling Beanie, and Susan will certainly have her hands full with the Bigglet. Also, when we’re out canicrossing Susan and I will either run along side each other or one of us will take both dogs – we won’t have either one of our Beagles trailing behind the other and possible feeling excluded from the pack any more.

Finally, if Beanie should attack Biggles again, we’ve been given tips on how to deal with it. Specifically:

• Refrain from shouting; it’s instinctive to shout to try to break up the fight, but at best it’s ineffective and at worst it could actually spur on the attack
• When pulling the dogs apart, avoid any lifting motion on their collars; just try to draw them apart horizontally
• Either put Beanie on her side (partly to give her the message that the attack is unacceptable, and partly to calm her down) or put her in a sit, and exclude her from the group for 20 mins or so.
• Don’t make a fuss of Biggles, and don’t force him to stay near Beanie either, but make sure that it’s Beanie who feels excluded after the attack and not him
• When things have calmed down, a side-by-side walk outside is a good idea.
• When reintroducing them to the same room, try to have Biggles enter the room and settle first, then allow Beanie to enter.
• Position Biggles so that he feels he has an easy escape route if he’s acting fearfully

Looking through all this, it seems like we got some things right over the few of days prior to Heather’s visit. Using the baskets to give our dogs a set location to stay in was a good move, as was walking them together after each attack (although we should have had a longer cooling off period before starting the walk). We did try the NILIF approach too, though not as comprehensively as the one given to us by Heather. That said, we didn’t have much confidence in what we were doing, and that’s where it really helps to call in an expert that we both trust: we’re now more confident in our dealings with the two Bs, and this in itself helps put them at rest.

By this evening Biggles was behaving much more like his normal self, and repeatedly tried to invite Beanie into a play session. She would have been happy to accept, but of course we didn’t allow it. Still, it brought a big smile to my face to see him back on form! He really should be getting “danger money” though. It reminded me of the Monty Python sketch in which a dim-witted accountant thinks he’s ready to become a professional lion tamer.

[Please note that Heather has no problem with us sharing what she told us, but it's important to remember that her advice in this case is specific to our situation and our dogs]

The first session was all about gently but firmly letting Beanie know who’s boss when other females are around, and managing the introductions so they don’t get off to a bad start. It went very well, and the next day we bought “proper” control leads from Pets At Home that have enough length to let you loop them across the dog’s chest (yeah, I know, there’s always an excuse for a trip to the pet shop). We actually broke the new leads out of their packaging and used them while we were walking around the store with our little vandals. They worked brilliantly; within a few seconds our two were no longer straining to get at everything on the shelves, although when my concentration lapsed Biggles did get to nibble the corner off a huge bag of biscuits. Nobody saw him do it though, so it’s just our little secret.

On the way home from the store we felt like true pack leaders. We’d finally turned the corner; from now on we’d be the ones in charge in our home. No more wailing if we’re late with a walk or puppy nosh, and no more embarrassingly vigorous humping sessions from Beanie when one of us has crashed out on the sofa!

Of course you can probably guess what’s coming. I’d barely put away our control leads when I heard a boinging session in progress in the kitchen. When I got there I found Beanie & Biggles demolishing a pack of cream crackers. In about 10 seconds they’d consumed about 2/3 of the packet. That has to be some kind of record – I mean I can’t eat more than two in a row before my chewing gear grinds to a halt, desperately in need of lubrication. I guess it helps if you bypass the chewing process and just swallow.

Since then we’ve lost 2 toilet rolls, a kitchen roll, a couple of tea towels and there’s a big hole in the rear lawn. On top of that, Biggles did two pees in last night’s heelwork to music class. I wasn’t there (Susan took him), but apparently Biggles kind of excused himself, trotted into an adjoining room and let loose with a power widdle before cheerily returning as if nothing had happened. Initially Heather gave Susan a single sheet of kitchen roll to clean it up. I’ve seen the adverts for the extra absorbent kitchen towels – you know the ones – “one sheet does plenty”. Yeah right! One sheet does sweet FA when Biggles has emptied himself! Later in the class he did it again, just to prove that he could. I guess what you win on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts..

A couple of days later, it became apparent that our tick search should have been much more thorough. Now fully engorged on our dogs’ blood, they were really easy to spot. Beanie had one on her eyebrow and one on her neck, while Biggles had a couple in the area around his naughty bits! We didn’t have a proper tick tool, so I grabbed a pair of tweezers and proceeded with the extraction. It was actually quite easy to remove Beanie’s ticks, because she held very still while I got a good grip, twisted and pulled. As far as I could see I got both ticks out fully (without leaving behind their mouth parts) though they kind of exploded from the pressure of the tweezers once I’d got them clear of Beanie. It was way, way harder to remove Biggles’ ticks. He’s never liked anybody, human or dog, messing about around his joy department and he wriggled about like a thing possessed. Trying to bullseye ticks with the tweezers while he was struggling like that was difficult in the extreme. It would have been easier to play “Operation” on the top of a washing machine doing its spin cycle. Anyway I eventually pulled the ticks, or at least their bodies, off my boy and happily neither our two dogs nor us suffered any ill effects.

The experience convinced me that we needed a proper tick extraction tool, so I hunted about on Amazon for a bit and eventually ended up with an “O’Tom Tick Twister‘.

It was the only device that didn’t seem to be a variation on tweezers and had good reviews. I popped it in our doggy care kit and promptly forgot about it – until yesterday that is! A couple of days ago we had a long walk around Culzean Castle, and then yesterday Susan spotted a tick on Biggles as he rolled over for a tummy tickle. Curiously it had chosen to attach itself to his nether regions again. Biggles’ nethers have always attracted other male dogs, but now they’re clearly a magnet for ticks as well. It’s a hard life being a Bigglet.

I went to get the tick twister, while Susan prepared to put our new Biggles handling routine to the test. Happily both the twister and the handling worked beautifully. Biggles struggled for a couple of secs then calmed right down, allowing me to go to work unhassled.

The twister kit contains two different sized plastic er.. well, let’s call them “forks” for want of a better term.

The idea is to slide the appropriate sized fork in around the tick’s attachment point. Once the tick’s mouth is securely gripped by the “V” of the fork, twist slightly and pull the nasty little critter off your dog. When I tried this on Biggles it worked perfectly! The tick came away intact and alive, so I wrapped it in toilet paper, squished it and gave it a burial at sea (flushed the bugger down the loo).

So now we’ve got a tick remover that really works and a little boy that doesn’t mind us handling him as long as we go about it the right way. We do however still have a spoiled little girl who tends to get stroppy if she doesn’t get her own way. We’ve been taking care to win all our little battles with her, but she still vocalizes her indignation when her demands aren’t met, as evidenced by this photo from our visit to Culzean:

Beanie seeks an answer from the heavens! It’s time for more treats but the humans aren’t taking the hint! Why??!!!

A couple more shots from our dreary but still enjoyable day at Culzean:

• To deal with situations we’re he’d stolen something, we offered Biggles a treat in return for the stolen item. We associated the word “swapsy” with this and after a while a mention of the word “swapsy” was often enough to make him give up his prize, just so long as he got a treat soon afterwards.
• To get him out of rooms he didn’t want to leave, we held impromptu training sessions which just happened to end up in the hall.
• Whenever he seemed to be getting more stroppy, we cut back on his privileges a little.

All of this made his behavior much easier to manage, but it didn’t actually eliminate the behavior. As proof of this, we decided to see what would happen if we tried to get something off him without using the “swapsy” workaround. Here’s a clip of how it turned out. Needless to say I was volunteered for the role of hapless victim! My approach is all wrong, but still, Biggles shouldn’t be reacting the way he did.

He absolutely detested having his ears cleaned (an important part of regular Beagle maintenance) so we gave it up, and any trip to the vet was unnecessarily stressful because we didn’t know if he’d take a dislike to the examination or treatment. It was a shame because most of the time Biggles is a true sweetheart, and his enthusiasm and attention during training sessions is unmatched, even by much more cooperative breeds.

Eventually we decided we needed to tackle the problem another way, because the Biggly boy is approaching adulthood and growling and snapping at anybody other than us could get him into serious trouble. We called on Heather Smith, who runs our pup’s Heelwork To Music classes. In addition to her training skills she’s a qualified behaviorist and has already helped friends of ours with their Beagle. She gave us some simple, practical advice and techniques for dealing with Biggles’ naughty habits. Here are some of them:

• Never back down. If you have a confrontation, you HAVE to win it, otherwise you can only expect things to get worse.
• Never respond immediately to our dogs’ demands. They get attention/food/walks when we decide, not when they ask for it.
• Gently get Biggles used to human behavior that can be threatening to a dog, such as standing or leaning over him. At the same time, adapt some common operations to make them less threatening. For example when attaching a lead to the collar, try to do it underneath rather than above the neck.
• In resource guarding situations like the one in the video, secure Biggles’ by the collar by reaching in from the side, not from the front. Don’t get in to a tug of war or talk to him, simply hold him firm and patiently wait for him to release the item.

All of this was valuable, but for me the most valuable thing Heather’s visit gave us was the confidence to tackle Biggles, and Beanie for that matter, and not be plagued with doubt that what we’re doing might be harmful or counterproductive.

Two weeks on, the changes in Biggles have been amazing. He rarely resists us when we try to take things off him, and if he does, he gives up within a couple of seconds. We can usually get him off tables and out of rooms he shouldn’t be in by command alone, and we’ve resumed cleaning his ears. On walks he’s becoming much more attentive and less headstrong. Beanie’s changed too – she’s suddenly become very cuddly, whereas before she tended to be a bit aloof and only accepted affection on her terms. I can’t help thinking that the most important factor in all of this is the confidence we now have in interactions with our dogs. I guess Caesar Millan would say that we’ve become a little more like the leaders of our pack.

And in case your wondering, demotion from joint pack leadership hasn’t made our two any less playful:

You wouldn’t believe how many goes it took to get them jumping in sync! Or if you own a beagle, maybe you would!

Don’t be fooled, Beanie’s not resting – she’s lying in wait, ready to ambush the Bigglet

Biggles knows what’s about to go down, and hangs back for a while…

Eventually he succumbs, and this is what’s waiting for him!

But he turns it around soon enough!

Biggles investigates a moth by the window. It seems kind of big, so he bravely hands the job over to Beanie

She’s remarkably gentle with the moth, and picks it up in her mouth then releases it a couple of times without harming it in the slightest. The capture and release cycle continues, but then some bits fall off and the moth dies. I guess they don’t make moths like they used to.

But there are some battles we just can’t win:

Beanie at least knows she’s not allowed on the table. She jumps off quickly as soon as she see’s us coming. Or at the very least she respects us enough to run FAST after jumping up onto the table and swiping the food off our fork as it makes it’s way to our mouth.

But Biggly Boy….”It looks nice up there. I think I’ll get up there”. Then FLOP. “zzzzzzzzzzzzzz”. He never touches our food – he just likes to be on the table.

Whatever their origin, they’ve granted Biggles some new abilities. Firstly, he’s become a master tactician. When gets into a chase with Beanie in our garden, he heads straight for the rear of the shed and lies in wait for Beanie. When she arrives, he tricks her into taking the long way round and quickly legs it round the other side.

Suckered her again!

Eat my dust, Beanie!

Admittedly he sometimes cuts it a bit too close and things don’t work out, but his strategy is sound.

It’s a royal pain in the bum if you don’t factor in Beanie’s remarkable acceleration

His other new talent is more of a problem for us – he can now open all the sliding-door cupboards in our house. It started with a few accidental openings caused by rough and tumbles with Beanie, but then he figured out how to do it at will. On the evening the breakthrough came, I heard some unexpected chewing sounds and found the Bigglet down at the far end of the corridor with a Paint Pod roller in his mouth. I retrieved it and shut the cupboard, but then two minutes later worrying noises summoned me and there he was again, indulging his obsession with the Paint Pod. This repeated three more times before I put an end to it by stapling heavy duty velcro onto the door and cupboard frame. Of course I only protected one of the cupboards, so shortly afterward I found him and Beanie lying on our spare duvet together, busy chewing off all the washing care labels. Yep, he’d figured out that his technique would carry over to the other cupboard. The next day, Biggles seemed to have disappeared from the house for a couple of minutes, until I spotted that the sliding wardrobe door in our bedroom was slightly open. Opening it fully I saw Biggles sitting among Susan’s shoes with a “Yes? Can I help you?” look on his face. I predict that our local Tesco is going to run out of velcro in the near future.

It doesn’t stop there. The other night he opened the door to the kitchen and managed to get his jaws round some very spicy leftovers. His bottom paid the price the next day (ever heard a Beagle singing Ring of Fire?) but I somehow doubt that it’s put him off. All this extra thinking has taken it’s toll on the Biggly boy though. And on Beanie. And on us.

Finally, on today’s tea time walk, Biggles’ new found intelligence somehow prompted a discussion about whether our Beagles truly understand spoken commands. I feel that they do, and decided to put it to the test. As we walked along, I said “stamp collection” in the same voice I use to call them over for a treat, and neither of them responded. Then I said “treat time” and they trotted over expectantly. It was all very encouraging, but then I blew it, because for some reason the spectacularly random “Return trip to Aberystwyth” brought them running. Still, Biggles can now open doors and cupboards, and that’s good enough for me.

The first problem we had was with resource guarding, or more specifically sock guarding. Our little boy developed a major obsession with socks from an early age, and he’d growl and even snap at our hands if we tried to take them off him. A little bit of firm handling from the head trainer at Biggles’ obedience class convinced him that this wasn’t a good way to behave, and though he still appreciates an occasional sock (especially if it’s smelly), he’s now very willing to accept a trade.

We tend to think he’s not as smart as Beanie, but he has learned how to open the tumble dryer and help himself to socks!

The growling and snapping (usually with no or very light contact from his teeth) soon resurfaced in other situations however. Though initially an extremely cuddly boy, he now took a dislike to being picked up and handled which was not very helpful when a vet examination or a nail trimming was required. My gut reaction to this was to be firm with him and make it very clear that such behavior would not be tolerated, but the almost unanimous advice we read was to avoid confrontations, so that’s what we did. As we backed off however Biggles started misbehaving in more and more situations. He developed a kind of passive-aggressive response to anything he didn’t like. It was kind of Gandhi meets Hannibal Lecter; he’d roll over onto his side, raise his upper rear leg slightly and snap at any attempt to approach him. We saw this when we told him to leave the kitchen, to come in from the garden, to go into his crate, in fact pretty much any time we asked him to do something he didn’t want.

We consulted trainers about this and the consensus was that as an adolescent boy, the Bigglet was just getting a bit too big for his boots. He needed to be shown his place in the world, but not by shouting and bottom smacking. Instead,  withdrawal of privileges and symbolic demonstrations of our superiority was the way to go.

About a month ago, we made the following changes:

• Biggles is no longer allowed into bed with us in the morning
• He is no longer allowed to sit on the sofa beside me
• When entering or leaving the house he has to sit and wait for us to go first
• If he tries the bitey-Gandhi routine, we just stand over him and stare him out until he gives up (usually less than 60 secs)

Interestingly these are all the kind of things you see on Caesar Milan’s “The Dog Whisperer” every week, even though the trainers in question don’t subscribe to his theories. According to Caesar’s pack hierarchy model we weren’t being sufficiently strong pack leaders and Biggles had figured he was the boy to fill that role.

By the age of 32, Alexander The Great ruled most of the known world. At the age of 1 year and a few weeks Biggles has lost his bedroom and sofa privileges, but he still has his favorite step.

The thing is, whether you believe Caesar’s theories or not a lot of his advice seems to work, and that’s the case here. Since we’ve been following these simple steps Biggles has once again become an easy going, cuddly little boy. He’s still naughty of course, but then he is a Beagle and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

OK, OK I’ll go into my basket, but I’m still going to give my bed a good seeing-to!