Monkey came quite close to being renamed this week. After watching the final season of the Viking saga The Last Kingdom, Susan started calling our youngest Beagle boy “Olaf”, and I have to admit it seemed like a good fit.

Like a big Viking oaf our boy does have a habit of blundering into things. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve crouched down to give Poppy a little cuddle, only to have our moment interrupted as two big Viking paws slam down onto the top of my head and a big slobbery mush pushes into my face. When he enters the living room his way of saying “hello” is to jump onto you unannounced, landing like a big sack of potatoes and trying to stick his (usually poo-covered) tongue up one of your nostrils.

Just like the stereotypical viking he’s quite fond of pillaging; he grabs socks, gloves, toilet rolls, tools, shoes – basically anything he can get his big chops around-  and carries them off to his pile of other looted items in the garden. He’s also developed a taste for humping. At the moment Poppy is the sole target of his x-rated pelvic activities, and he has absolutely no sense of propriety. For example one morning we closed the two of them on the deck for a moment, and Poppy tried to squeeze through bars of the gate just as she’d done as a little pup. Poppy is still very much a titch, but apparently she has grown enough to cause her to get stuck about half way through the bars. Once she realized her predicament she started to panic, and as both Susan and I raced up from the garden to assist, Olaf  The Insatiable decided that now would be a great time for a bit of rumpy pumpy. From his point of view a fair maiden was stuck halfway through the gate with her business end fully accessible – what else would you expect a Viking to do? Oddly enough his unwanted advances did motivate Poppy to pull herself back through the gate before I had to rip the bars off it, so I guess you could say he helped, after a fashion.

A couple of days later an incident occurred which wrecked my boy’s Viking aspirations. I was giving the youngsters their morning walk and as we passed a house with a very territorial and vocal doglet, I realized that their garden gate was open. Before I could do anything the dog in question sprinted out to confront us, woofing angrily. Fortunately verbal abuse was as far as this encounter went. Poppy took it in her stride, but what did Olaf The Fearless Beserker do? He bravely made a little puddle. This was hardly the stuff of heroic Viking sagas; it was just a silly little boy peeing himself because he got scared by another dog – a dog who incidentally was smaller than him. “Olaf” was instantly right off the table, and Monkey was back for good.