The next time we stop over somewhere for a night a or two, our two merchants of chaos won’t be trashing any hotel rooms. They also won’t be waking other hotel guests at 3am to alert them that someone with a motorbike helmet has just walked within 50 yards of our window. How have we achieved these miracles? We’ve got a caravan, that’s how. Yep, the next time you’re stuck behind a big white fibreglass snail on a winding country road, it could be us.

Beanie & Biggles’ keen senses have been telling them that something was afoot for some time now.

For one thing, they’ve had a lot of enforced crate naps – often well before normal bed time, and without just cause. New fabric crates have also mysteriously appeared, and though the dynamic duo have been encouraged to give them a thorough nasal once-over, they haven’t replaced the crates in our house.

Then our pups’ little Citroen Beagle-mobile abruptly mutated into something bigger, cleaner and less smelly. It was a terrible shock to the system; Biggles had only just finished coating every surface of the old car with his discarded white fur, and now he has to start all over again.

Being thoroughly professional Beagles, our two have tried very hard not to let these strange occurrences get in the way of normal activities.

Today though, all hope of normality was blown away when a delivery man brought a large white thing and put it by the side of our house. Beanie and Biggles took up their sentry positions at the front window and managed to see off the delivery guy using a combination of Clint Eastwood stares and woofings, but seemingly nothing could frighten away the white thing. After what seemed like an age, they were finally allowed to investigate it…

So the caravan has now been thoroughly sniffed, the work surfaces have been scratched, the carpet’s been dug up, and we’ve had a play session – not bad work for 15 minutes, but at least now any damage done will be to our own stuff, not to someone else’s!