Now that she’s crossed the five month boundary, we can apparently expect Beanie to start behaving a little like an adolescent child: rebelling against authority, copying anti-social behavior from other dogs to improve her street cred and so on.

I thought we might be seeing the first sign of this last week when I caught her hawking and spitting on the carpet. That’s just great I thought – we’ve now got a Beagle who likes to gob in the house! I had dark visions of what the future might hold. Rebellious Beanie hanging out with the wrong crowd (probably border terriers), drinking from discarded beer cans and bottles of Buckfast, mugging old dogs and stealing their treats etc. Come to think of it, she’s already had a go at shoplifting! She snatched a hide shoe on our last visit to the pet shop and would happily have walked out the door without me paying.

Fortunately, Susan had a different interpretation of Beanie’s unlicensed loogies and made an appointment with the vet for what appeared to be the doggy equivalent of a cold.

Beanie enjoys visits to the vet. Everyone makes a fuss of her and more often than not the nice secretary gives her a couple of treats. This time was very different however. The second we announced ourselves at the desk, the secretary said “oh that’s the dog with the cough” and asked us to wait outside in the car park and until her slot came up. No cuddles, no strokes and more importantly no treats! Instead Beanie was being shunned like a leper. She may as well have had a tag on her collar with the word “unclean” scrawled on it.

When the vet called us in she carried out a brief examination and questioned us about where we take Beanie for her walks. As soon as we mentioned one particular park, she nodded and said our Beanie had probably being caught up in a local epidemic of kennel cough, or to be more accurate infectious tracheobronchitis. The treatment would be a short course of antibiotics helped along by small doses of human chesty cough medicine (Benylin, Venos). Now that she knew that Beanie wasn’t carrying the plague, the vet was happy to give Beanie a cuddle and our little treasure showed her appreciation by covering almost the whole examination bench in short white Beagle hairs. [Quite a large proportion of Beanie’s coat is black, yet somehow she always sheds white hairs when she’s on a dark surface…]

We kept Beanie at home in isolation for a couple of days:

but then we decided to make the most of the recent good weather by going to the park, although obviously we took care to minimize her contact with other dogs.

Recently we had to change to a different doggy training class. I have to stress that this wasn’t because our little miss was so naughty she got expelled! Nope, we just couldn’t make the normal training night due to other commitments.

We found a website for what appeared to be a good alternative club and called the instructor. It turned out that she’s no stranger to Beagles, and in fact one of Beanie’s sisters – Bella – goes to one of the classes. Needless to say we signed up straight away! We’ve been trying to run into Bella for some weeks now; we’ve heard that she’s visited our local parks, but somehow we’ve always missed her.

Unfortunately”Sod’s Law” is clearly in effect because Bella has missed both of the classes we’ve been to so far. Clearly she must be an even naughtier little Beagle than Beanie – at least Beanie doesn’t play truant! Still, when she finally does turn up it’ll be nice to compare notes with her owners and see how she’s grown.

Bella (left) and Beanie investigating a hose together, before they left for their new homes

We did get a big surprise in the most recent class though as not one but two other Beagles turned up! One of them was Tanner, a 7 month old lemon-colored male. The other Beagle was Bessie, who’s 13/14 months old and is from the Newlin kennels, so she’s probably related to Beanie in some way.

We’d met Tanner and his family briefly before at the park, and he and Beanie clearly remembered each other because they wasted no time in getting down to some serious wrestling. Bessie, being a little more mature, wasn’t so keen to join in with all this silly puppy behavior. Nevertheless, at one point in the class the instructor was drowned out by the sound of three howling Beagles.

The actual training was a little more advanced than we were used to, and when Beanie got her turn I was expecting her to cause mayhem! Happily though she decided to behave herself reasonably well, and didn’t compare too badly to Tanner. On the other hand, maybe Beanie’s naughty influence dragged Tanner down to her level. Regardless, Bessie showed us how well behaved a Beagle can be, and in fact at the end of the evening she graduated to a more advanced class. Methinks it’ll be quite some time before our bundle of chaos gets to graduate!

I don’t know how she does it, but Beanie’s always had a remarkable ability to clean herself. Some days she’s come back from the park covered in mud yet still emerged from her bed a couple of hours later in a relatively presentable state. Lately however we’ve noticed that although she usually appears fairly clean, her subtle houndy scent has been replaced by a far less fragrant eau de toilet. After a particularly muddy park session at the weekend (the results of which can be seen below) I decided it was time to introduce Beanie to the pleasure of bathing.

I got some “no tears” puppy shampoo, grabbed my muddy pup and headed up to the bathroom. Rather than using the bath though, I opted for the shower cubicle. I figured this would reduce the chances of Beanie staging her own episode of “Home Makeover – Beagle Edition”. To avoid Beanie getting stressed by the slippery surface of the shower floor, I threw an old towel down and put her on that, then got in with her and closed the door.

It soon became apparent that Beanie isn’t too keen on power-showers. She kept drying to dodge the water so I ran the jet through my free hand before it reached her, and she calmed down and accepted her lot. The lathering phase was much more enjoyable though; she stood perfectly still while I massaged her with the gel. Even so, I tried to get things over with quickly and proceeded to the final rinse off in short order.

When she emerged from the cubicle she looked like a drowned rat. Drowned, but clean. After a towel dry I performed a sniff test and found my first Beagle wash to be generally successful. Her body and most of her head now smelled fresh, but I’d missed a smelly spot on her ear flaps. Still it was a big improvement, and I don’t think she’s been left with any fear of future bath times.