We’ve been describing The Beanster as 15 years old to other dog walkers for a couple of months now, but in reality she only had her 15th birthday a few days ago.

Most people who meet her have a hard time believing she’s that old, particularly now that – on the advice of a behaviorist (more on that in a moment) – we’ve been giving her a low dose daily painkiller. She’s become more frisky, more active and playful, and unfortunately, more of a stroppy, entitled little madam.

But let’s roll back to the behaviorist part. We called in professional help because Beanie is still having difficulty accepting the pups, especially the extra large one with the fully intact pocket billiards set.

They’re all great on walks, they’re fine in the garden and when we’re doing well established routines (pre-walk prep, mealtimes, tooth-brushing and such), but at other times – especially at night in the lounge – Beanie has been showing signs of being rather disgruntled.  She paces, she woofs and occasionally she grumps whenever Monkey is present. In many ways we can’t blame her; Monkey is a big active boy who could easily hurt an elderly lady by accident, and it’s understandable that she’d want to keep an eye on him and keep him in his place. That said, as we head into winter we really need the two of them to get on better, so we consulted a well-respected behaviorist to help us make that happen.

The first part of the session was just an exchange of information with all the Beaglets still tucked up in their crates. We told the behaviorist about all the steps we’d taken to keep Monkey and Poppy from being a pests to our older dogs, including giving Beanie exclusive access to our second lounge, complete with its own private decked balcony – a facility that became known during the summer as “Beanie’s Penthouse Suite”.

Yes Dad, this appears to be fitting for a pupplet of my standing

Is any of this stuff edible, and if not, why not?

Yes, a spoiled Beagle girl could get used to this…

The behaviorist seemed to approve of all that – especially the penthouse suite – and she nailed all of the reactions we’d been seeing from Beanie, and correctly predicted our reactions to those reactions, if you know what I mean. The advice she left us with was to keep Monkey separate from Beanie on evenings for a while longer and work on getting him to be calmer and less prone to excitement. She also picked up on the way Beanie was sitting and thought that she might be having low level discomfort due to her advancing years, which could be contributing to her irritability. A course of mild daily pain relief was suggested, and since we’ve been doing that and the other things, tension in the house has been steadily dropping. The painkillers have brought about the most noticeable change, seemingly restoring Beanie’s confidence for things like jumping onto the sofa, dancing at mealtimes and so on. It’s great to see her back on form, but with that restored confidence we’re also seeing more of the naughty, demanding little madam that was a feature of the younger Beanie.

We’re going to have our work cut out keeping that in check and getting her closer to accepting Monkey the way that Biggles has done.  Other than a bit of competitive pooing on walks, The Bigglet pretty much ignores the pups and they leave him alone (possibly because they think he’s a bit weird). One thing they can all agree on is that Beanie’s new birthday present is seriously comfy.

A big donut bed. Biggles likes it..

Poppy and Monkey like it..

..and Beanie loves it.

Beanie & Biggles are experienced blackberry pickers, but Monkey and Poppy are newbies and I was curious about how quickly they’d acquire the berry habit. It turns out they’re naturals, in fact Monkey has become so blackberry obsessed that it’s hard to tear him away if we encounter any on our walks.

Biggles coaches Poppy in her blackberry picking, which is unfortunate because after all these years he still hasn’t learned that the red ones aren’t ripe

Monkey seems to have got that one susssed


And Beanie? Well she’s happy to let me pick the best ones and give her the full waiter service :)

One the face of it, Monkey has it made.  He’s got a fun sister to play with…

.. a big garden to run about in, and Beanie & Biggles’ entire toy collection to play with. He does however have one big problem: everybody and everything is out to get him!

There have already been multiple attempts on his life. When the humies take his pack to the beach – ostensibly to let Beanie & Biggles do some resistance training in the water – it’s really about bumping off the Monkster.

Help! They’re trying to drown Monkey – it’s Monkeycide!!

When food is being handed out he’s always last to receive it, and he’s sure that his humies would happily let him starve to death if he didn’t make such a fuss. Come to think of it, the only way he’s stayed alive so long is through constant vigilance and willingness to make a fuss. And he certainly does make a fuss. Sometimes when I leave the room he becomes convinced he’s being abandoned (even though Poppy, Biggles and Susan are usually still in there with him), and there’s crying and howling. When Poppy gets a chew and won’t give it to him, that’s Monkeycide too and there’s crying and howling. There was even more crying and howling yesterday when he was, for a time, genuinely abandoned and in potential peril.

One of us forgot to double-bolt the gate at the bottom of the garden, and at some point it became unlatched and swung open (a body slam during play might have done it). Two inquisitive little Beagles (well, one of them is little, while the other is shocking large for his age) snook out through that open gate and embarked on their first ever off-lead adventure. I had my head down working in some other part of the garden at the time, and when I finally came up for air I looked around to see what the pups were doing. This is always a good idea because Monkey and Poppy are often engaged in unsanctioned activities, like using the tops of our compost bins as a trampoline until eventually there’s a ripping sound.

Oops.. did we do that?

..And do you think Dad will notice?

Anyway, I saw no pups but I wasn’t immediately concerned; maybe they were hiding round the back of some taller plants, or maybe Susan had let them into the house. I checked the concealed areas of the garden without success, and in doing so I became aware of our neighbor’s dogs barking intently at something. I was about to go inside to look for them when my gaze landed on the open gate, and the penny finally dropped: they’d escaped! I raised the alarm with Susan, grabbed a pair of leads and ran off to hunt them down. The neighboring dogs were still barking, so I got the idea that maybe Poppy and Monkey were close by.  I ran up towards the nearby farm which affords a decent view of the strip of land running at the back of our garden, but then in the lower field of the farm I spotted Poppy. I called her and being a mostly good little girl she ran straight to me. As I wrestled to get her on lead and past the gate that stood between us, I heard Monkey ‘s “Help! It’s Monkeycide! ” howling, but this time it was much more desperate and higher pitched than normal, and I feared that he’d hurt himself. Thankfully that turned out not to be the case; even before I’d secured Poppy, Monkey emerged from the tree line and sprinted across the field towards us. He was clearly fine physically, but genuinely scared at being abandoned not only by his humies but also by Poppy, and I’m not sure who was more relieved when I got a lead on him.

The attempts at Monkeycide continue, but Monkey has at least worked out a way to prevent Poppy from getting away from him ever again.

With 16 kilos of Monkey on top of her..

.. Poppy ain’t going nowhere!