Bread shortage and Monkey’s Morning Adventure – Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack

This is the 15 year old girl that needs to be lifted onto our bed each morning for a snuggle.

This is the girl who often needs a bit of help getting onto the sofa.

And this is the girl who watched a plate of buttered bread being placed on the table at teatime, decided that infirmity is a choice, and jumped onto the table to speed-swallow a big mouthful of that bread.

Yes, The Beanster can still launch a successful shock-and-awe raid on the table when she wants to.

In other news, Monkey had a further brush with Monkeycide this week when I took him out for some early morning running practice.

He’s always got a ton of energy so recently I’ve been letting hum join me for a short but vigorous run up by our local farm, prior to going out with our other three furries for their main walk. All his previous outings passed without incident, but on this particular run lots of things were happening at the farm. On the outward leg it was mucking out time: a tractor was scooping up cow poop from one of the pens and piling it up in the yard to form an impressive poo mountain. I mistimed our approach and we had to dodge the tractor as it backed up. I was sure Monkey was well clear of the hazard but suddenly I felt his lead go very, very tight. Had he been hit? Was a limp and lifeless Monkey on the other end of the lead, having finally succumbed to Monkeycide?

I looked round and was instantly relieved yet slightly disgusted to see a huge wedge of poo and straw in his mouth. It turns out that Monkeys can’t run and chew a poop gobstopper at the same time.

We had a second brush with danger on the return leg. Some of the cows were about to be moved from one holding area to another, with tractors used to create a funnel of sorts. “You’ll be OK” said the farmer, “Just keep going and be quick!”. The “be quick” part proved to be problematic. There were various farmyard droppings on the road and Monkey wanted to sample them all. I got him through the faecal gauntlet and we were almost out of the danger zone when one more obstacle loomed into view: a final tractor was positioned to block the cows from escaping down the road, with its arms and scoop extended out horizontally just a few feet above the ground. I almost had to drop to a crawl to pass under the tractor’s arms, and Monkey was not at all sure about following me. Fortunately for both of us, the sound of approaching hooves convinced him that running under a metal monstrosity was preferable to being trampled under several tonnes of cattle; it was the lesser of two Monkeycides, one might say. Monkey certainly had a lot to tell Poppy that morning when we got back home.

Some other random shots from that last couple of weeks:

A big delivery of timber heralds the start of a new round of garden projects, and Poppy is ready, willing and able to get under foot (though Beanie is still the master of being in just the wrong place at the wrong time).