How silly do you have to be to get yourself into the same predicament twice in 5 mins? This silly perhaps?

Actually no, because for once Monkey was not the chief candidate for the silly party! This time it was this normally sensible little thing here:

For some reason that only she can know, Daisy became obsessed with getting into one of our wire-fenced enclosures. The fence was too high for her to jump, and the base of it was too enmeshed in tangles of red clover for her to dig and push her way under. The fence did still have a major weakness however; it was highly susceptible to being leant on by much larger, 20+ kg brothers. Somehow Daisy convinced Monkey to press one panel of the fence down, and Daisy hopped right over it. I should volunteer at this point that I didn’t actually observe this happening, but strong circumstantial evidence – namely a Monkey shaped low spot in the fence – led me to this inescapable conclusion.

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” says the song.
Well Daisy’s brother is heavy, and it comes in handy sometimes.

So, Daisy was now in the enclosure doing whatever she planned to do, while Monkey was still stuck outside. Monkey doesn’t like being excluded when there’s something fun happening (it is in fact a form of Monkeycide) so he began to cry and howl. I was working elsewhere in the garden and on hearing the commotion I thought “whatever’s going on, it’s getting noisy so I’d better stop it.” Being lazy, I did something almost as silly as Daisy; in a loud clear voice I announced “Monkey! Daisy! Let’s have a biccie scramble!”

This was a dumb thing to do for two reasons. The lesser reason was that it could teach the pups that making a racket will get them biccies. The more important reason for it being dumb was that it’s basically the Beagle equivalent of calling the Batphone in the good old days when Adam West was Batman. “Quick Daisy! To the Batcave!”. As soon as she heard my announcement Daisy was desperate to exit that enclosure and come runnning, but she couldn’t get out! The bent fence panel was a one-way portal; easy to hop over in one direction, but very difficult and even dangerous for a titch of a girl to cross in the other direction. Over the next 30 seconds, the situation turned into a crisis of Beagle proportions!

Back at that top of the garden I was expecting to hear the sound of galloping pups coming for their biccies, but that’s not what I heard at all. Instead I heard Monkey’s comical “Oh! It’s not fair” howls turn into a panicked “What can I do! Someone please help!” woofing pattern, while Daisy was wailing and screeching as though hurt. I dropped everything and hurried down the garden, and as soon as I could see what was happening, I breathed a sigh of relief. Daisy was physically unharmed, but she was trapped by the enclosure and desperate to respond to the offer of biccies. Monkey – bless him – was equally desperate to help her, but unable to work out how, he was bouncing up and down on the outside of the enclosure and doing his best to sound the alarm. He could have just left her and come for a solo serving of biccies – and back in the day I suspect that’s exactly what Beanie and maybe even Biggles would have done had they been in the same situation – but that’s not Monkey’s way; he was going to stay by his sister and help her any way he could. He really does have a heart of gold.

I often wonder if Monkey remembers the panics over Poppy and that terrible day he lost her. He dotes on Daisy, that’s for sure.

For a moment it was comical to watch the two them, but the grin didn’t stay long on my face. Daisy was working herself into a panic, and I sensed that she was about to attempt to jump that fence panel and get herself genuinely hurt in the process. I started towards the enclosure again as fast as I could, and called to her, hoping to distract her from what she was about to do. Amazingly it worked! As soon as she heard my voice, she ran to side of the enclosure nearest me and sat awaiting my arrival. I guess all those emergency rescues of toys lost under the sofa had taught her that when Daddy’s on the case you can just relax and let him sort it out, just like in the kids series when Thunderbird 2 arrives on the scene. It may be heavy and slow, but it always fixes things.

Monkey didn’t relax until he saw me pick Daisy up and kiss her, at which point there was unmistakeable relief on his face and his tail went into high gear. I popped her safely down on the grass and instantly the two of them were bumping noses and rubbing their faces against each other, and I served them up a biccie each because that is after all what I’d promised. I righted the bent fence panel as best I could, told them both to dial down the silly, and started heading up the garden to complete whatever it was I’d been doing.

A few seconds later I heard Monkey woofing again. Like Biggles before him, Monkey has woofs that translate very easily from Beagle to UK English; this new woof was plainly saying “Daisy you absolute pillock! You’re on your own this time!”. And indeed when I turned to check what was happening, I saw Daisy right back in the enclosure. This time I didn’t announce a biccie scramble; I just picked her up, blew a raspberry on her bottom and spent the next half hour making a more solid repair to that dodgy fence panel.

Do you think Virgil Tracy of International Rescue ever blew raspberries on the bottoms of those he’d just rescued? If he’d ever had to save Daisy twice in the space of a few minutes, I think he probably would have done.

Things are happening in the Monkeyverse. The Beaglemobile has shrunk and changed color, and the two individual crates that used to house Monkey and Daisy while on the road have morphed into one big crate that they travel in together.

What’s more, this crate now sits at a height that allows someone who is nosy enough and tall enough to see right out of the windows. Daisy – being on the small side of “titch” – can’t see Jack or any members of his extended family; Monkey however can see everything, and as he’s safe in a crate with his little sister, he feels empowered to woof. Already he’s hurled abuse at other dogs, people with funny hats and workmen, and that’s just the start. Over the years all our Beagles have been the victims of unprovoked drive-by woofings, but now the shoe is on the other foot. Actually the shoe isn’t on a foot, or even a paw, it’s in Monkey’s mouth and it’s about to get a robust and noisy chewing, just like Daisy’s bum!

Do you ever get peed-off about all those products that never come close to delivering their promised service life? Daisy certainly does, but her frustration isn’t focused on LED lightbulbs, TVs or devices with non-replaceable batteries; for her, it’s about moths. She got what she thought was a really good one. It didn’t fly, but it kept flapping its wings and doing unpredictable dances on the floor, and Daisy loved it. Again and again she drew back and pounced on it and gently picked it up in her mouth. She threw it into the air and caught it, then rolled onto her back, delicately holding it between her front paws, gazing at it in innocent wonder.

In the above video imagine that the severed giraffe body part is actually a moth, and you’ll be getting close to what I saw :)

Then abruptly the blummin’ thing stopped working! Moths are supposed to last for days, sometimes weeks, but this one had packed in after a just a few minutes’ play. Worse still it had no support website, and Daisy being Daisy, even if it had come with a paper receipt she’d almost certainly have ripped it up and swallowed it. There was no way to get a refund or a replacement now, and she was not happy! She howled and woofed at it, but to no avail. I picked it up and flushed it down the loo, but in doing so I left the door open just long enough for her to dart in and nick a toilet roll, so at least the day didn’t end too badly.

Monkey on other hand had a very positive experience with a product I’d almost forgotten we had: single-use instant cold packs. We originally bought them as a possible aid for Poppy during seizures, but since we lost her they’d just been taking up space in a cupboard – until Monkey came in from the garden one evening obviously feeling the heat. It had been hot, sunny day, and for most of it Monkey and Daisy had just been snoozing in the shade. When the sun eased up a little, the Beagle Brain Trust went down into the garden and decided to make up for all that lost chase and wrestling  time.

Monkey of course is every bit as fit as Daisy, but he’s also twice her weight and prone to getting very, very excited by a chase, so when they came in he was panting heavily; even lying on the cool wood floor wasn’t helping him much. The cold packs popped into my head, so I dug one out and struggled to read the instructions without my glasses. It said something about folding the pack to burst the inner bag. I half expected to burst the whole damn thing and end up spraying myself, the furniture and the walls with nasty chemicals, but fortunately all that happened was that the pack started cooling in my hand. I held it in his lordship’s most accessible armpit, and he liked it. I did the other armpit, and he liked it even more, in fact he liked it so much that he now rolled onto his back, legs akimbo, inviting me to put the pack in his groin. I did so, and very quickly I got the impression that Monkey was liking it a bit too much. I want to stress that at no point did Mr Pinky crash the party, but there were signs that we’d left the PG rating behind and were heading into 18 territory.

As I keep telling people, Monkey has the most loving and gentle nature, but he is also a raving pervert. I withdrew the cold pack before my legs got humped and noted that Monkey had stopped panting, though it was unclear whether this was due to distraction or genuine cooling effects.

As we’re now into August, I have an excuse to do a photo dump for the latter half of July.

Our crab apple tree is losing leaves a little early again, which is of concern to Daisy!

On the other hand, those fallen leaves are great to roll on..

Biccie time!

On hot days we do a bit of this..


And a bit of this..


And then a bit of this…

The Monkey and Daisy double-decker: (1) above the table..


..and (2) below the table.

Not to rush you Monkey but.. exactly when will you be finished with that ball?

..And how come your bit of trampled foliage is better than mine?

Clearly the Silly Ideas Department has just sent a new memo!

Cute

Handsome

Cuddly