Poppy is without doubt our most – genuinely – affectionate Beagle. I say “genuinely” because Beanie would otherwise own the title if we could ignore the fact that her interactions always seem to coincide with us spilling dinner or dropping crumbs on ourselves. What’s more, cuddles with Beanie are pretty much one-way only, in that she’ll tolerate hugs and kisses just so long as she can keep licking up the food debris. As I’ve noted previously, Beanie is the consummate “courtesy Beagle“.

Poppy on the other hand is all about the cuddle itself. At seemingly random times during the day she’ll approach, slowly walk up our legs with her front paws and hang out for an extended cheek-to-cheek snuggle. If she gets onto a lap, she’ll often orient herself so that she can gaze right into our eyes. I’ve come to call these gentle interactions “Poppy moments”.

I have found however that when a Poppy moment comes to an end, it’s best to hold one’s breath and move to alternate location, preferably at least three metres away. Why? Well it’s because Poppy generally ends one of her moments because she’s just dropped one of the most noxious farts known to man or beast, and she doesn’t want her little black sniffer to experience it. I’m guessing she’s thinking “Oooh that’s gonna be a bad one – sorry Dad, time to go!”

Seriously, her bottom burps are foul in the extreme; it doesn’t seem possible that such a small, sweet looking thing could produce such a smell. Worse still, it’s not even just a smell – you can almost feel the coarse, gritty airborne faecal particles entering your lungs as you unwittingly breath them in. I’ve often noticed that if Monkey joins in a Poppy moment, he’ll ram his snout into my armpit, or push his head through between my crossed legs, which I would generally characterise as unwise knowing my armpits as a I do. Once you factor in the Poppy bombs it all makes sense: even the whiff of my sweat armpits is preferably to a Poppy arse-ripper.

I suspect readers who are doggy nutrition evangelists may now be thinking “Ahh, that’s because you’re not feeding Poppy the right dog food” and if so, well, you have a point, but things are not quite as you might think. I’m confident that changing the food I’m intentionally giving to Poppy will not make any difference to her flatulence, because the cause of it isn’t something I’m giving her or not giving her. Nope, the cause is something she’s nicking and nibbling like there’s no tomorrow. It’s these little critters we’ve planted in the garden:

Jerusalem Artichokes, also known as “sun-chokes” or in less polite company “fartichokes” actually grow really well here in Scotland. I know this because we’ve probably got around fifty of them in our rear garden after trying just a few last year. Or at least we probably had around fifty of them; that number must have dropped considerably because Poppy has been digging them up and munching on them for some time now. At first I put the soil disturbance and occasional artichoke debris down to the action of foxes or moles or other uninvited visitors, but one morning I actually spotted Poppy liberating one from its earthy tomb.

As the name “fartichoke” suggests, these tubers have a reputation for causing wind if consumed excessively or by one whose gut has yet to adapt to their unique qualities. I suspect Poppy ticks both of those boxes. Thing is we still want to grow them because they take no effort and taste great, and in any case they proliferate at such a rate that getting rid of them would be difficult. They’re now entering their growing season again so maybe Poppy will leave them alone and the air in our house will clear, at least for a few months…

Oh boy am I thankful that Monkey hasn’t acquired the fartichoke habit! With the amount he can eat in a day and the incredible amount of gas released, his bum would likely explode.