My cheeky little boy has had a week to remember. At the very start of it, movie night returned and both he and Beanie got a fresh filled hoof each to keep them occupied during the film. They hadn’t had hooves in a while so there was much wagging, rapidly followed by even more licking, slurping and chewing. It’s not uncommon for Biggles to end up with Beanie’s hoof on the following day – when his sister has concluded that the chewing effort required to get the remaining tasty bits just isn’t worth it – but this night my boy wasn’t prepared to wait. The instant Beanie left her hoof to check for unclaimed crumbs on the rug, he swooped in and knicked it. Under normal circumstances this would result in an immediate telling-off from the Beanster, or she might just complain to me and get me to put things to rights, but this time he got away with it. Things are always worth more to Biggles when he’s stolen rather than received them, and this was particularly evident with his extra hoof. He chewed it all that evening and all the next day, sometimes falling asleep mid-chew as fatigue set in.

The hoof-fest was great, but a day later he scored extra naughty points by breaking a treasured bottle of our first attempt at home-brewed wine, spilling that wine all over the kitchen floor. To be fair it wasn’t a deliberate act of destruction; it was more the result of a critical misunderstanding of how the world works. He’d just been let into the kitchen on his way to the outside loo, but he wanted to do a quick flyby of the worktops to see if there was anything worth getting. Susan was onto him immediately – trying to herd him to the door – so he gave her the run-around by diving under the kitchen table. He’d probably intended to emerge on the other side, squeezing between the wine rack and one of the chairs to gain freedom, but this is where the critical misunderstanding came in; you see Biggles thinks that if his head fits through a gap, then so will his big white bottom. This is sadly not the case. His bum nudged the bottle enough to make it fall out of the rack and smash on the floor. This alone would have been a good result for any Beagle boy, but Biggles wasn’t finished; in the ensuing commotion caused by the flood of red wine he snouted open the bin and made off with a used tin of tuna.

His biggest score came towards the end of the week when my latest order from the pet shop arrived. I’d got a couple of tubes of doggy toothpaste, toothbrushes and three bags of pressed fish cubes (the treat I give the woofers after a good brushing session). Susan took in the package, checked its contents and then – distracted by something else – left the opened package on the sofa. A little later when both us returned, the rug was covered in chewing debris and Biggles was merrily finishing off one of the bags of fish cubes. I was about to take both pups to the beach for a run, but looking at Biggles’ swollen undercarriage I realized that running was out of the question for him; in fact the only thing he managed to do for the rest of the day was sleep while his gut struggled with the enormous processing job.

Processing…

Still processing…

Neither of us could tell whether he was deliriously happy with his extra full tummy, or whether he’d got a bad case of “Christmas pud syndrome”, but I noted that he chose to sleep fully stretched out; there were no curled up power-naps until after a particularly long loo visit. Mercifully there were no emergency toilet trips during the night, but the next day I went out to the garden to see how much of a cleanup operation was required and returned with four full poo bags. Four, and clearly all his work! Still my boy wasn’t done; on our walk it was “eyes down for a full house” as we crossed the first road. His virtual pants were dropped again as we walked by someone’s drive, and again when I tried to get him out of the way of a cyclist.

Even if this week finished with a epic tummy ache, I’ve a feeling that it will go down in Biggles’ memory as a particularly good one.