Traditions Old and New – Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack

At some point after we’d moved to our current house we handed out some of the more exotic treat options to Beanie & Biggles, something better than mere biccies. Rather than chew them on the spot, the dynamic duo decided it would be better to race down the garden and consume them on the flat, lower part of the garden with the rear fence at their backs. This very quickly became a habit, and the habit turned into a tradition; Monkey learned it from the two Bs, and he in turn has taught it to Daisy. It’s just what you have to do when you get something a bit special.

It’s very comforting to see this little tradition continuing, a bit like putting on an old pair of slippers – not that I have slippers and if I did, I doubt they’d last very long with Monkey & Daisy in the house. By contrast, some other longstanding traditions have been firmly and unexpectedly broken over the last couple of weeks. The first break was delivered by Monkey. Having received special dispensation from Princess Daisy to have a go at her latest rolling spot, Monkey didn’t just give it a go, he gave it a go and a half. A fox had left a small poop in the garden, and while Daisy merely daubed a bit of this pungent eau-de-toilet on her neck and shoulder, Monkey came up from the garden covered in it. His head, his shoulders, his chest and his front legs, all were visually and nasally contaminated, and I realised it was time for Monkey to experience something that always filled Beanie and Biggles with the utmost dread: bathtime.

Err.. bathtime.. should I be concerned?

Up to this point, Monkey had got through nearly 4 years of life without ever having a bath. He’d had wipe-downs with wet flannels and hadn’t liked them one little bit, but he’d never had an honest-to-goodness feet-in-the-drink proper bathing experience. I was convinced he’d view it as a drowning attempt – Monkeycide – and at a minimum I was going to get soaked, the bathroom floor was going to get flooded, and one or both of us would get an injury as I lowered 20kg of powerful, struggling Monkey into a watery doom. As it turned out, he didn’t struggle at all, in fact he took it completely in his stride. Getting him in the bath was still hard simply because I had no desire to coat myself in secondhand fox-poo and so had to lift him at arm’s length, but he didn’t panic once. Who’d have thunk it: a Beagle that likes bathtime, or at least tolerates it without making a fuss, and that it should be the very same Beagle who hides under the lounge table at bedtime when he sees a doggy toothbrush in my hand!

Yesterday Daisy pulled off something even more remarkable than Monkey’s panic-free bathing experience: she caught an actual living thing. Throughout their lives Biggles and Beanie (especially) tried to prove their hunting prowess but failed dismally. Their idea of a stealth attack involved screeching at full volume while they were still 50 yards from their prey, and they never caught anything that was actually alive, save for the odd insect (and even then it was more by accident than skill). Monkey follows their example; he makes a big show of sprinting after the squirrel that frequents our garden, but he only launches his attack once the squirrel has already climbed out of reach. Perhaps he doesn’t really want to catch it; he just enjoys the chase. His predatorial ineptitude is a blessing, because (1) it’s entertaining to watch and (2) it allows us to avoid the less pleasant realities of nature. Daisy of course never had Beanie & Biggles to show her how hunting should be done, so she did it wrong and caught herself a baby mole.

I’d just staggered out of bed after a lie-in with the pups, and I let them into the garden as I went to get dressed and prepare my breakfast. As is my habit I kept checking on Monkey and Daisy from the kitchen window, and I noticed some very odd behavior from Daisy. She was sat bolt upright at the bottom of the garden, not slouching in a lazy puppy-sit as she usually does; it looked like she was guarding something. Monkey was very curious, but each time he approached Daisy, she hurriedly picked that something up off the ground and distanced herself from him. It was obvious that whatever she had was valuable and not to be shared, and therefore probably disgusting or dangerous or both; I had no choice but to put my breakfast on hold and investigate. I found it difficult to close the distance on Daisy without spooking her, but after a few attempts I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I stuck my hand in my pocket and made it look like I was hunting for a biccie while I approached. I got just close enough to see the mole before Daisy once again picked it up and scarpered; it was still alive, able to move a little but injured and incapable of escaping. I’ll spare you the details, but I eventually convinced Daisy to let me take the mole and “take care of business”.

Having broken one tradition, Daisy has balanced things out by creating a whole new one of her own. On walks where we pass a low garden wall, she’s taken to jumping up and walking along it. In itself that’s nothing special – Beanie & Biggles used to do that all the time – but Daisy’s innovation is to stop at the end of the wall and entice me to pick her up, give her a cuddle, then carefully lower her back to terra firma. She’s definitely not afraid to jump down (she does much bigger jumps off the table on our deck, especially when she’s nicked something) so I have to conclude that it’s all about the cuddle, and the body language and eye contact she uses are just the same as when she wants a tummy tickle. I don’t know who loves it more – me or Daisy – but I do love it a lot.