Heat, Peas and Poop – Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack

Sometimes it feels a bit like I’m running an old folks’ care home. At night:
“Come on Beanie & Biggles it’s time for bed!
No Biggles that’s not your crate – yours is over there, remember?
No that’s still not your crate Biggles, Monkey’s in that one, see? You wouldn’t fit in and it wouldn’t go well at all!
Beanie, you need to get all your bits in the crate or I can’t shut the door! No Beanie, get your tail in! No, your leg’s got to be in too!”

And then in the morning:
“Hold on Biggles I’m trying to get you out into the garden – don’t do your poop yet! No Biggles, not on the deck, go down the steps first. Oh, OK, well I’ll clean that up in a minute.”

Yep, in many ways our golden oldies are harder work than the youngsters. Biggles – who has always been a bit of a vocal boy – is going deaf and senile, so he’s not only woofing more, but more loudly and at a higher pitch. Additionally he’s been having a bit of trouble controlling his poop-shoot. The vet suggested adding more roughage to his diet, cautioning us that it might make matters worse; a risky venture for sure but it’s working, and it’s also very popular with the other pack members.

Thanks to the extra veg, warnings of an imminent Biggles delivery now come early enough to avert accidents in the house. The deck remains a poop zone, but Poppy’s rather partial to Biggle-droppings and often cleans them up before I can get a bagged hand to them. Note to self: avoid early morning kisses from Poppy.

Sock therapy has proved somewhat helpful in managing Biggles’ other issues. What is sock therapy? Well it’s a short, concentrated game of find-the-sock with biccie payments for each success.

It took a while, but now he’s remembering previous sock locations and searching them systematically. His woofs still come out at a volume that would drown out a live concert by The Who, but he’s having fewer moments of confusion.

He does seem to have trouble grasping the idea that the sock game is only played at a certain time of the day and with a specific set of socks, but that’s just normal Biggles.

Beanie’s had trouble coping with the recent heatwave, probably because of the changes in her fur; over the last year or so it’s become extremely soft and fluffy. It feels wonderful to the touch, but I suspect it’s keeping her far too warm and she doesn’t seem keen to shed it. Biggles’ fur has also gotten much softer of late, but just prior to the heatwave he went through a very thorough shedding process. It blocked the vacuum cleaner several times, but at least he’s now wearing the Beagle eqivalent of shorts and a T-shirt instead of fleece-lined trousers and a Parka jacket. We switcheed the main walk to an earlier slot in the morning to get it done before the heat builds, but still Beanie’s needed to wear her cooling jacket most days.