I’ve never been interested in the big annual award ceremonies. I couldn’t tell you when the Oscars or the various Nobel prizes are handed out, let alone who won them, but I’m pretty sure there’s a national award for Naughtiest Beagle coming soon, because Beanie & Biggles have been pulling out all the stops to win it.

I’d say that Beanie was in pole position earlier in the month. She pulled multiple disappearing acts in the garden and in the house, but by far the worst was on the beach.

Mindful of the recent increase in dog theft, I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the dynamic duo during the off-lead section of our beach runs together. I’ve become quite adept at jogging backwards so that I can keep them in view if they’re dawdling, and any time a substantial gap opens up between us I always raise my speed or come to a dead stop – whatever it takes to close it. Despite this, little Ninja Beanie managed to vanish one morning in between my frequent checks. One minute she was there, digging up old sand-covered poos to eat or roll on (as appropriate) and the next she was gone. I asked Biggles where she was but he seemed equally clueless, stopping in his tracks to scan the long line of dunes behind us. I called her, reminding her that I was in possession of multiple hotdog slices, but she failed to reappear. I fed some of those hotdog slices to Biggles and gave a loud commentary about just how tasty they were, but still she didn’t pop back into sight. I quickly scrambled up one of the dunes to gain a view over the golf course that runs parallel to the beach, but there was no white-tipped tail poking up above the border grass. Then I looked backed down at the beach, and there she was, standing alongside Biggles with a quizzical expression on her face that said “What on earth are you doing Dad? I’m right here”. How she managed to elude me remains a mystery, but my running watch recorded a peek heart rate right around that time.

I’m sure my heart rate peaked again the next morning when I opened Beanie’s crate but she failed to emerge. I prodded her to make sure was OK but still there was no response. Only when a I reached in and tried to extract her did she finally shows signs of life. To be fair that particular incident may have been a deserved punishment for my criminal actions the previous evening. As the Beagle Book of Law clearly states: “when a person finishes a bag of Doritos, that bag should be given to the most beautiful houndlet in the room and definitely not to the houndlet’s pesky brother, even if he does happen to be lying on his back, showing off his tummy and his unmentionables”.

Additionally rips have appeared in some of the fleeces and nets covering the raised beds in our garden, and every once in a while I’ve spotted the little furry vandal who caused them making a hasty departure from crime scene. Yep, Beanie again. And on the day I took our wheelbarrow to the nearby farm to get a serving of horse manure, that same little girl became so obsessed with the leftovers  in the barrow that she overturned it, almost managing to crush herself in the process.

With Beanie apparently so far ahead in the naughty ratings, you might be thinking that Biggles would have to be do something really big to catch up, but actually all he needed was something rather small; small, but disgusting. Yep you guessed it: he left a poop in our bed again.

On the morning of the inappropriate jobby I opened the crates to allow the woofers into our bed for a bit of snuggle time. As always Biggles got into my side, Beanie got into Susan’s side, and a few minutes later both of us were forced out by the ancient Beagle martial art of Pushing Paws. Susan went for a morning cuppa while I went for my shower, and on my return I peeled back the covers to check if any furry people were still in bed. They weren’t, but something else was. It wasn’t a full on non-chocolate log so much as a decapitated turtle head, but regardless it had no business being there. Given that it was on my side of the bed, positioned exactly where his lordship’s little white bottom had been, there was no doubt about who had produced it. The real question was: why?

We’ve come up with various theories to explain the bed poop. Maybe it was an overly exuberant fart that pushed out more than just gas – we’ve all been there, right? Maybe it was Biggles’ symbolic way of telling us he was feeling a off-color; after all, he’s surely well used to me struggling out of bed and announcing to the world “wow, I  really feel like crap this morning”. My favorite theory however comes from a nature program we saw a I while back about Pandas: apparently mother Pandas routinely pat their baby’s bottom to help it poo. What’s that got to do with Biggles I hear you ask? Well Susan often jokes that when Biggles was a little angel about to be born, he got confused and took a baby Panda suit instead of a Beagle birthday suit, and that’s why he’s mostly white with two big black spots. And come to think of it, I did pat his bum when he got into bed that morning…