Return Trip To Aberystwyth

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Paul

Biggles has recently gained some additional brain cells. We’re not quite sure where he got them from; Susan thinks that maybe they fell out of Beanie’s head and into his during a robust play session.

Whatever their origin, they’ve granted Biggles some new abilities. Firstly, he’s become a master tactician. When gets into a chase with Beanie in our garden, he heads straight for the rear of the shed and lies in wait for Beanie. When she arrives, he tricks her into taking the long way round and quickly legs it round the other side.

Suckered her again!

Eat my dust, Beanie!

Admittedly he sometimes cuts it a bit too close and things don’t work out, but his strategy is sound.

It’s a royal pain in the bum if you don’t factor in Beanie’s remarkable acceleration

His other new talent is more of a problem for us – he can now open all the sliding-door cupboards in our house. It started with a few accidental openings caused by rough and tumbles with Beanie, but then he figured out how to do it at will. On the evening the breakthrough came, I heard some unexpected chewing sounds and found the Bigglet down at the far end of the corridor with a Paint Pod roller in his mouth. I retrieved it and shut the cupboard, but then two minutes later worrying noises summoned me and there he was again, indulging his obsession with the Paint Pod. This repeated three more times before I put an end to it by stapling heavy duty velcro onto the door and cupboard frame. Of course I only protected one of the cupboards, so shortly afterward I found him and Beanie lying on our spare duvet together, busy chewing off all the washing care labels. Yep, he’d figured out that his technique would carry over to the other cupboard. The next day, Biggles seemed to have disappeared from the house for a couple of minutes, until I spotted that the sliding wardrobe door in our bedroom was slightly open. Opening it fully I saw Biggles sitting among Susan’s shoes with a “Yes? Can I help you?” look on his face. I predict that our local Tesco is going to run out of velcro in the near future.

It doesn’t stop there. The other night he opened the door to the kitchen and managed to get his jaws round some very spicy leftovers. His bottom paid the price the next day (ever heard a Beagle singing Ring of Fire?) but I somehow doubt that it’s put him off. All this extra thinking has taken it’s toll on the Biggly boy though. And on Beanie. And on us.

Finally, on today’s tea time walk, Biggles’ new found intelligence somehow prompted a discussion about whether our Beagles truly understand spoken commands. I feel that they do, and decided to put it to the test. As we walked along, I said “stamp collection” in the same voice I use to call them over for a treat, and neither of them responded. Then I said “treat time” and they trotted over expectantly. It was all very encouraging, but then I blew it, because for some reason the spectacularly random “Return trip to Aberystwyth” brought them running. Still, Biggles can now open doors and cupboards, and that’s good enough for me.

A Necessary Sacrifice

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Paul

The clocks have gone forward on hour! We’re now officially in British Summer Time (BST) and just to prove that the weather has a sense of humor, temperatures are supposed to dip below freezing tonight and stay low for most of next week.

This is not exactly ideal conditions for germinating grass seed. It’s pretty obvious we’re not going to have a fully recovered lawn for at least a month, if not two, and since we’re not prepared to deprive Beanie & Biggles of their play area for any longer, we’ve decided to “sacrifice” half of the garden. A fence will keep the lower half safe from Beagle interference for however long it takes the grass to regrow, and in the meantime our two hooligans can let off steam in the upper half, saving their sanity and ours. Later in the year we can either swap sides or fence off small areas for localized repairs.

I have to say that Beanie and Biggles seem quite pleased with our decision..

Even though they were given more or less free rein within their enclosure, they didn’t disturb the bare soil and seed much at all. I’ve noticed that our Beagles seem to have a talent for homing in on the things we don’t want them to mess with; the flip side is that if we’re not bothered about something, there’s a fair chance they’ll leave it alone. When I saw Biggles getting very interested in a graveled corner by the fence, I tried to make this Beagle intuition work for me; I figured that if I didn’t react, maybe he’d just give it a couple of sniffs and move on.

Apparently the Beagle “sixth sense” also enables them to suss out when you’re trying to use reverse logic.

Gone To Seed

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Paul

The bulk of the work on our garden is finally over. The firm we used – Howes Landscaping & Design – did a brilliant job.

We’ve now got a level paved patio, drainage to keep the garden from turning into a mud bath when it rains, and we’ll soon be getting a tree to give our two crazy Beagles something to chase around.

Beanie and Biggles have so far endured a month without their garden, and now that large parts of it have just been reseeded they face another 2-3 weeks of deprivation before all the bare soil is once again covered by grass. In a spectacular lapse of judgment, we took pity on them and let them onto the lawn “just this once”; after all, they’re usually disinclined to chase first thing on a morning, and with both of us out there they shouldn’t be able to get up to much mischief.

Amazingly things went well. They both insisted on walking over all the seeded areas and having a good sniff, but there was no digging or chasing. After about 20 minutes, we saw the first signs of Biggles trying to initiate a play session, so we rounded them up, locked them into deck area and erected a plastic mesh fence between the patio and the lawn. The plan was that for the next few weeks they could have the deck and the patio, but not the garden proper. The fence was neither high nor sturdy, but they’d never be out there unsupervised so surely it would be enough? Well, perhaps not too surprisingly, it wasn’t enough. Not even close.

The second I opened the gate and let them onto the patio, they made a bee-line for the ramp on the right hand side. Biggles was in the lead, and ran straight at the fence. He didn’t try to jump over it, or to squeeze under or around it; he just ran straight at it in top gear as though it wasn’t even there. The resulting impact pulled three or four of the fence poles clean out of the ground and left Biggles in a heap of tangled orange mesh about a yard into the lawn. The Bigglet appeared dazed for a second – I think he genuinely hadn’t even seen the fence – but when Beanie shot straight past him he immediately wriggled free of the mesh and joined her for a chase that made Bullitt seem tame. The running disturbed the bare areas of the lawn a bit, but if things had stayed at that level there wouldn’t have been too much of a clean up job. Unfortunately, or perhaps inevitably, the chase developed into a high speed play fight:

First Beanie, then Biggles, went “back surfing” straight into loose soil sending the seed flying.

Just when it looked like things were calming down and we might be able to get them on lead, Beanie did the one thing guaranteed to kick the play back into top gear.

They crammed a full four weeks’ play into that brief but impressively destructive romp, then grinning from ear to ear they took their dirt covered paws and tummies into the kitchen to turn that into a bombsite too. A bit of raking returned the lawn (more or less) to its former state, but I think the whole “we can confine them to the patio” idea has been binned. They’re just going to have to tough it out for another few weeks!