Monkey came quite close to being renamed this week. After watching the final season of the Viking saga The Last Kingdom, Susan started calling our youngest Beagle boy “Olaf”, and I have to admit it seemed like a good fit.

Like a big Viking oaf our boy does have a habit of blundering into things. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve crouched down to give Poppy a little cuddle, only to have our moment interrupted as two big Viking paws slam down onto the top of my head and a big slobbery mush pushes into my face. When he enters the living room his way of saying “hello” is to jump onto you unannounced, landing like a big sack of potatoes and trying to stick his (usually poo-covered) tongue up one of your nostrils.

Just like the stereotypical viking he’s quite fond of pillaging; he grabs socks, gloves, toilet rolls, tools, shoes – basically anything he can get his big chops around-  and carries them off to his pile of other looted items in the garden. He’s also developed a taste for humping. At the moment Poppy is the sole target of his x-rated pelvic activities, and he has absolutely no sense of propriety. For example one morning we closed the two of them on the deck for a moment, and Poppy tried to squeeze through bars of the gate just as she’d done as a little pup. Poppy is still very much a titch, but apparently she has grown enough to cause her to get stuck about half way through the bars. Once she realized her predicament she started to panic, and as both Susan and I raced up from the garden to assist, Olaf  The Insatiable decided that now would be a great time for a bit of rumpy pumpy. From his point of view a fair maiden was stuck halfway through the gate with her business end fully accessible – what else would you expect a Viking to do? Oddly enough his unwanted advances did motivate Poppy to pull herself back through the gate before I had to rip the bars off it, so I guess you could say he helped, after a fashion.

A couple of days later an incident occurred which wrecked my boy’s Viking aspirations. I was giving the youngsters their morning walk and as we passed a house with a very territorial and vocal doglet, I realized that their garden gate was open. Before I could do anything the dog in question sprinted out to confront us, woofing angrily. Fortunately verbal abuse was as far as this encounter went. Poppy took it in her stride, but what did Olaf The Fearless Beserker do? He bravely made a little puddle. This was hardly the stuff of heroic Viking sagas; it was just a silly little boy peeing himself because he got scared by another dog – a dog who incidentally was smaller than him. “Olaf” was instantly right off the table, and Monkey was back for good.

In those early weeks after getting Poppy I remember taking her for a walk and thinking “wow, this really shows just how manageable Beanie and Biggles have become”. At some point in their lives we just started trusting them to be left alone in the house while we worked in the garden or had a conversation with a neighbor; on walks I could just say “hold on a minute” while I re-tied my laces or fiddled about with my phone and they’d just stand there quietly without pulling, and if I wanted a posed photo of them I could just tell them to “wait” and (briefly) release their leads without them running off. We’d come to take all of these little things for granted, but with Poppy and subsequently Monkey, all bets were off. Puppies were hard work while our golden-oldie A-Team was – by comparison – a predictable well-oiled machine.

All that has changed.

The turning point came just after Beanie had a run of bad days. She was lethargic, on and off her food, and getting quite wobbly on her feet. She’d been doing all the physio exercises we’d been given, but Beanie was was still deteriorating. Thanks to the heat from the new wood burning stove we’d installed in the living room, she was also looking very disheveled, with big tuffs of winter fur coat coming out all over the house. Things had gotten so bad I’d actually said to Susan “I think this could be Beanie’s last year”, and she’d confessed to having the same thoughts. Then we realized that since getting Monkey, Beanie hadn’t been getting up onto our laps and requesting regular back massages. Over the next couple of days, Susan began giving Beanie thorough back and shoulder massages each day whether the Beanster wanted it or not, and since the massage sessions made Biggles a bit jealous and woofy, he got them too.

By the the third day, the changes in the A-Team were dramatic. Beanie abruptly rediscovered her passion for humping Susan’s legs and began demanding tug play sessions; her appetite even for lowly kibble returned fully and consistently, and no unguarded cup was safe from an exploratory snout insertion. It felt like we had the naughty Beanie from five years ago back in our house, and Biggles? Well he got a full dose of renewed vigor too. Any sock that wasn’t nailed to the floor was his; he pawed open cupboards in search of sandpaper and masking tape to shred, and worst of all, he became a master bread thief.

Recently we got a little bread-maker machine to make a fresh loaf whenever we need it and without the big preparation hassle or the cost of putting the oven on. The smell of baking bread is wonderful and apparently the taste is great too, but I wouldn’t really know because Biggles beats me to it every time. It’s as though every loaf that comes out of that little machine is cursed, destined to end up in Biggles’ black hole of a gut, or at the very least have a Beagle mouth-sized chunk torn from it. In truth it’s always my fault; I open the kitchen baby gate, get distracted by something for a moment, he sneaks in and the next thing I hear is the commotion of a snatch and grab mission. It doesn’t really matter where on the worktops the bread happens to be sitting – his pogo-stick jumping ability is back at full strength and he can reach any target that’s below our head height. I hit my limit the other day and shouted at him, but any residual anger was swept away when he later had a bout of vomiting and spent several hours in the humie bed with his head on my pillow.

The Bigglet, convalescing on my pillow after a severe bread overdose.

In the midst of all this Poppy and Monkey are still doing their best to be inducted into the Naughty Hall of Fame. Monkey made a determined effort to pull down my pants yesterday while I was talking to a neighbor through the garden fence. This morning on their walk I looked round when the leads went tight and saw a writhing mass of Beagle body parts. Apparently they’d decided that now was a good time for a wrestling match, and until my eyes and brain caught up with the action I couldn’t tell which bits belonged to which Beaglet; one furry bonce was emerging from beneath someone’s tail, while another one was growing out of an armpit, and there seemed to be far too many ears and feet for only two puppies. When silliness like that happens on walks my unthinking response is to say “Oi!” to get their attention. Just for fun I counted the number of times I had to say “Oi!” until we got back home, and it turned out that was a nine-Oi walk. I then went out with the rejuvenated A-Team and we had a sixteen-Oi walk. That’s right: the youngsters were outclassed by their elders, and it’s worth noting that some of those winning “Oi!” points were awarded for high-difficulty maneuvers like pooping through the gaps in a fence into someone else’s garden and sticking one’s nose into the shopping bag of a passer-by.

Poppy and Monkey consoling each other after being out-naughtied

As I sat recovering from the walks I took pleasure at the thought that Beanie & Biggles have rediscovered their inner puppies, and that those inner puppies are still naughtier than our actual puppies. Then I had a follow-up thought: if you say “Oi!” to a Beagle often enough, will they starting thinking that’s their name?

As usual, here are a few more shots of the smaller Ois:

Size-wise Monkey has now overtaken his older sister Poppy, and looking at them playing it’s sometimes easy to forget that he’s still just a four month old pup who still has a lot of essential skills to acquire. For example it’s only in the last week that he’s managed to jump onto our sofas, and even now he can only do it if he’s focused on play; if he stops to think about it he’s overwhelmed and either aborts the attempt or face-plants on the seat cushion before sliding back to the floor. He can climb any flight of steps as well as his sister, but turn him around and ask him to come back down and his confidence can suddenly crumble. His face is so expressive you can see the emotional roller-coaster he’s on as he as tackles something new: “Yeah I can do that! Oh hang on, actually it looks a bit scary. Oh crap I’m going to die! No, no, I’m OK, I’m OK. Oh yeah that was easy – I was never scared!”

We rode the roller-coaster together recently when I took him for his first trip up Loudoun Hill with Poppy. It’s only a small hill that normally takes about 10 minutes from base to summit, but the great Monkey expedition easily clocked up 20 minutes on the ascent, and even longer on the way down. I very much enjoyed cupping my hand under his little furry bum to give him a boost when needed, but I was toiling on the way down, trying to keep a wriggling Monkey tucked under one arm while holding onto Poppy’s lead with the other.

By contrast my second trip up the hill with the A-team was a relaxing stroll, and that’s despite Beanie and Biggles working hard to take their lead tangling skills to the next level.

The youngsters hang out in the van…

while the A-Team show who are the real kings of hill climbing

Despite his tender age Monkey has demonstrated a remarkable talent for Poo Magic. This highly specialized subset of the performing arts involves the assisted removal of an unfeasibly long foreign body from one’s bum hole. Beanie is of course the world record holder with her 12 inch plastic shopping bag fragment, but earlier this week Monkey gave a very creditable roadside performance with an 8 inch object. Until I got my hand on the protruding end of it and started pulling I figured it was just a regular klingon, but that thing just kept on coming. I’ll never know for sure what it was – it was too coated in the brown stuff for me to see – but as Monkey likes nothing better than to sneak poo bags out of my pockets when he’s sat on my lap, that’s got to be my best guess.

This was such an impressive performance for a novice anal magician that it may have put Beanie’s nose out of joint, because she’s been off her main meals intermittently for a week or so. 

For many Beagle owners reluctance to eat at mealtimes is a sure sign of a health problem, but throughout her life Beanie has used it as an attention-grabbing tool. I felt certain that this time was no different, based mainly on the fact that I’d watched her turn her nose up at her bowl full of kibble, but spend ages trying to get a piece of the exact same kibble that escaped from Biggles’ bowl and rolled under the hall table. I was all set to use the time-honored “eat it now or I’ll take the bowl away” technique to get her eating again, but then Susan started Googling. Maybe Beanie really could be ill this time? Maybe she could be losing her sense of smell and finding kibble insufficiently appetizing? Yep, you guessed it: we got a vet appointment just to play it safe, and of course she passed it with flying colors. She may be 14 years old, but she still knows how to get us worried.

As for Biggles, well he’s having the time of his life, having finally solved a mystery that’s been troubling him for the last 13 years. You see whenever I go for a shower I lay out my fresh clothes, and when the water starts flowing and I’m safely tucked away in the cubicle, Biggles sneaks in and tries to nick my socks. He checks my top, my boxers, my pants, but until now he’s never found my fresh socks. That’s because I hide them by tucking them into the door handle on the inside of the bathroom door. Last Tuesday however, right after Poppy’s latest attempt to emulate the Andrew Puppy and run off with the loo roll, he came into the bathroom for a nose around, and discovered my socks. He’s a happy boy, and now I’m the one trying to find the missing socks.

As usual, here are a few more recent shots: