Today we drove down to Bolton to pick up our new little boy, Biggles. His breeders live way down in the South of England, but they kindly brought him up to a Beagle show in Bolton in Lancashire, shortening our journey to just over 200 miles. That should have taken us around 3 hours each way, but of course I somehow chose this morning of all mornings to catch a nasty bout of diarhoea, from which I learned three things:

• the Imodium commercials are a pack of lies!
• journeys take a hell of a lot longer when you have to make a pitstop every 20 miles or so
• Welcome Break toilets are all exactly the same. Spooky…

Still none of that managed to spoil the pleasure of getting our second Beagle. And he’s an incredibly cute, cheeky and confident little chap.

Here are some shots of him just before we headed off back home:

He was absolutely brilliant in the car. He cried for a couple of minutes just as we set off, but after that he split his time between sleeping soundly and sniffing Beanie. She was right beside him, but in a separate crate. We felt it would be safer to keep them apart during the journey – neither of us fancied having to concentrate on driving if some little squabble broke out between them.

When we got him home, I took him out for a little exploration of the garden before tea, while Susan took Beanie on a well deserved walk. This was Beanie’s longest ever car journey, and though she was obviously very bored she hadn’t complained once.

Mmm.. Weetabix for tea!

Eventually our two pups met each other properly, and almost immediately began playing. We kept the play time short so that Beanie wouldn’t tire Biggles out, but they still found time to shred up a puppy training pad!

Biggles was really confident throughout and had no qualms about trying out Beanie’s toys and even giving her ears a cheeky nibble. Beanie clearly recognized him as a little pup and gave him a lot of latitude, though she eventually gave him a verbal caution when he made off with her favorite chew one time too many.

Lay off of my (blue suede) chew!

He understood and backed off the chew, then he promptly gave the same warning to the naughty little boy he saw reflected in the glass of our TV stand!

Prior to getting Biggles I’d been concerned about how well they might get on. I’m not worrying about that now, but as our obedience trainer reminded us, that’s only part of the picture. A new pup entering a household with an existing dog may bond more closely to his canine chum than his human owners, losing his independence into the bargain. To avoid that, we’re going to have to make sure that both Biggles and Beanie get plenty of time separately with us as well as time together. It’s going to be hard work, but worth it to make sure that Biggles grows up to be just as confident and outgoing as Beanie.

Today Beanie is officially one year old. To celebrate her birthday, her normal breakfast was followed by something pretty special:

That is, believe it or not, a sardine birthday cake. You may notice there’s a bit of a gap in the ring of biscuits around it. It shouldn’t be hard to guess how that happened..

Despite being a Beagle, Beanie does respond to the “leave” command if you’re firm enough:

..and that saved enough of the cake to slice up and take to the park as treats not only for Beanie but her pals.

Now it’s no secret that Beanie’s favorite activity is chasing, or being chased by, other dogs. Today, her first chase was with a fit, fast young girl called – a little confusingly – Murphy.

When Murphy left Beanie split her time between Kirby and her sister Bella – who was also celebrating her first birthday. As the two sisters have “come of age” they can now enjoy the vices reserved for adults:

Yes, it’s true; they can now legally enjoy a squeaky can of latex lager in public. In this case there was no drinking of course, just running. And Beanie certainly did run. And run. And run. At one point no dogs where actually chasing her but that didn’t seem to matter, she just kept on running for the sheer joy of it.

Eventually she took a few breaks for wrestling and mud eating..

..but then she spotted an unguarded object wrapped in a poo bag, and after a lightning-fast raid to acquire it, it was back to chasing.

On this occasion the bag was wrapping a genuine lager can that some park visitor had thoughtlessly discarded, but in the past she’s run off with the real deal. I once spent half an hour trying to get a bag full (and I really do mean full!) of Weimaraner poo off her. Once the bag started to show signs of wear I’m sorry to say my resolve crumbled. There are some things you just don’t want to touch with bare hands..

Back at home, it was time for Beanie to open her pressies, and there were quite a few waiting for her!

She got the hang of unwrapping very quickly as you can see.

One gift from our friends Kathleen and Neil was an immediate hit: pizzle sticks. What’s a pizzle stick you may ask? Well, to put it delicately it’s the dried primary naughty bit of a bull.

Or to put it more plainly, it’s a bull’s willy. Yep that was my reaction too, but Beanie thought it was great!

We got a her a couple of presents too, to give that one good braincell of hers a workout.

The blue thing is another one of the those toys that dispenses a treat if it’s subjected to enough violence, although in this case it’s weighted so that it always returns to an upright position.

The other toy is a “dog tornado”..

It’s basically a set of revolving discs with slots for treats. Depending on where you place the treats , the dog may have to learn to align several of the discs in order to liberate a treat. These toys are obviously an indulgence on our part, but they may help to keep Beanie occupied when her little brother Biggles – possibly coming to stay with us as early as next Saturday – is in need of a nap!

We just got a note from Jill Gardner (BuffyRannoch on the Racing Club forums) saying that the track is completely waterlogged, so there’ll be no racing this Sunday (12th Oct). I have to say I’m not surprised – when I took Beanie to the park this morning I was very glad I had my wellies and waterproofs on!