The Forest of Creaky Doors

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Paul

Beanie & Biggles’ morning lie-in was cut short on Friday when we dragged them out of bed for a return visit to Ben A’an. The last time we were there it was sunny, with blue sky and great views all around. This time it was grey and windy with poor visibility, but we still had a fun time.

The first part of the trail winds through a very pretty forest, packed with interesting smells to entertain Beagle noses. It’s only when you emerge from the forest that you get a proper look at Ben A’an.

It looks a lot taller and steeper than it really is. The rocky path up is in great condition and after all the scrambly walks we’ve done this year it was nice to do something short and relatively easy. It would have been even easier had it not been for the wind. We’d been sheltered as we’d walked through the forest, but but it was blowing really hard at the top. Happily for us, you can’t live with the Biggly Boy without getting well-used to dealing with powerful wind, and the occasional odorless 30mph gust wasn’t going stop Susan & the pups from scaling the last few rocks for their summit photo.

Getting back down from there proved to be more of a challenge however; Biggles pulled off a world-class lead tangle as he tried to find the optimum sniffing position, while Beanie made the most of her special talent for getting under one’s feet.

We’d had to resort to the “bum method” to descend the Cobbler recently, but this was the first time I’d seen anybody using the “belly method”..

Does this remind you of the rock climbing scene in Mission Impossible II? No, me neither, but then Tom Cruise didn’t have a pair of naughty Beagles tied to him!

Fortunately this unplanned rock climbing stunt concluded without any casualties, save for my trousers and abdominal muscles (I peed my pants a little bit and had sore sides from laughing). I took a couple more shots from the summit, then we headed back down to the shelter of the forest.

On our previous visit the walk back to the car had been dominated by Biggles’ woofing and baying frenzy, but this time he was a model of self control. His silence allowed us to hear all the ambient noises in the woods, and it was pretty spooky..

The forest was very densely populated with tall trees – so much so that they would rub against each other in the wind, generating all manner of scary sounds. We heard creaky doors, rusty gates, ghostly whistles and tapping coming from all directions. Biggles seemed oblivious to it all, but Beanie frequently paused and looked round trying to identify the source of the noises. Very Blair Witch.

In due course we made it back to the car without any disappearances, and without anybody standing in front of the camera with an excessively runny nose (Beanie & Biggles’ noses are moist, but not runny).

Pack Puzzler

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Paul

Ever since we got Beanie I’ve always wanted to see an actual pack of working Beagles in action. As it turns out there is such a pack in the North of England that welcomes visitors/spectators, so with any luck my wish could come true sometime this winter.

Obviously Beanie & Biggles wouldn’t be allowed to come watch the hunt with me; together they can easily make as much noise as The Who in their heyday (back when Pete Townsend wasn’t half deaf) and this would no doubt demoralize the quieter and better behaved working Beagles. Still, when they returned from this morning’s walk our pups took a moment to ponder the logistics of running a full pack, and it caused a fair amount of head-scratching.

For starters, consider that a working pack can contain upwards of thirty Beagles. Thirty! Now consider that after a rainy morning walk, all of those Beagles have to be toweled off , wrapped up in their favorite blanky and set down on their own sofa in the living room. That could take quite some time if done properly. I bet some of those poor Beagles would have to wait to be taken care of, and Beanie & Biggles don’t “do” waiting!

Then there’s the issue of space; just how large would the living room have to be to accommodate thirty or more sofas? And let’s say that later in the day when things brighten up, a little sunny spot shows up in the corner of the room. There’s no way all those pack Beagles can share the sunny spot, so what do they do? Ration the indoor sunbathing time? Use some kind of a rota?

And in the kitchen, is the table big enough to allow all the Beagles to camp out on it as they watch for accidental spills and drops when humie food is being prepared?

Do they have one really, really huge bed for all the Beagles, or is there a two-to-a-bed policy, requiring the house to have fifteen or more bedrooms, each furnished with a double bed and a full sock draw (the latter for entertainment purposes of course)?

And what about tummy tickles? Does each pack Beagle have his/her own dedicated tummy tickler, or do they have to share, and if so, presumably there are standards to ensure that no Beagle has to wait more than a minute for the tickle to start?

Susan spent some time Googling on the computer in an attempt to answer these questions, and Beanie & Biggles didn’t like what she found one little bit!

Whaddya mean they all live in a crummy barn with no sofas, no access to a proper bed and no tummy tickles at all??!!! Sod that I’m off back to bed!!

Beanie Goes Large

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Paul

Beanie and Biggles have often used their tugging abilities to stretch one of my socks until it’s big enough fit a seven foot tall basketball player, and now they’ve tugged and tugged at their blog until it too has grown in size. This is a good thing because the little details of their adventures can now be seen more readily, though sadly until someone invents scratch and sniff computers, the smells are still left to the viewer’s imagination.

Speaking of smells, our vet probably raided the supermarket shelves for air fresheners after Beanie’s most recent visit. We took her in for a check up when she suffered a complete loss of appetite following an otherwise minor bout of sickness. As usual Beanie came away with a variety of costly pills and potions for a condition that would most likely have cleared up on its own, but during the course of the examination the vet spotted that her anal glands were kind of full and immediately set about emptying them. Now I’m well aware that anal gland secretions can be pretty foul; I’ve got a t-shirt that received a sample of Biggles’ botty juice and after two washes it still doesn’t smell right. What’s more, Susan has had a go at “milking” Biggles’ glands using the external method and that was pretty bad too, but until that vet visit we’d never witnessed a full purging of the glands using the finger-in-the-bum-hole method. The Beanie juice came out faster than expected, soiled the examination table, and within seconds filled the entire room with an aroma so gross that only the the Scots term “boufing” comes close to describing it. I’d had a roll and sausage not half an hour before and I’m telling you, it was a struggle to keep it down.

It’s never a good idea to get your nose this close to a Beagle bum hole, regardless of whether said Beagle’s anal glands have been recently expressed or not!

Anyway I’ve no idea whether the treatment helped hasten Beanie’s recovery, but in the space of 24 hours she was back to her food-stealing, tea-drinking ways and we were able to take her and Biggles out on a walk together again. For a change of scenery we decided to try out one of the trails around Dundonald castle, and to our surprise we got to enjoy a woodland walk of the length and quality that we’d normally find only in major country parks many miles away from home. We only explored a fraction of the trail, but what ground we did cover was sniffed very thoroughly and enthusiastically by our pups!

A fallen tree presents no obstacle to a pair of intrepid adventurers, even if they are a bit on the short side!

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