It’s been a drama-filled fortnight. We’ve had highs, we’ve had lows, and we’ve had poo. Lots and lots of poo, most of it in inappropriate places.

Prior to bringing Poppy home we built what we thought was a lovely playpen in a corner of our lounge. It had a little foam-walled kennel in it, a plush bed, a wall-mounted water bowl and lots of toys. What pup could fail to love such an indulgent little den?

Well Poppy clearly didn’t. She seemed to view it as a prison and nothing else. We got tantrums whenever she was placed in there, even if her confinement followed a long and fun play session in the garden. When we stopped pandering to the tantrums, Poppy began pooping and peeing in there. At first we thought these incidents were purely accidental, but one day she soiled the playpen four times in a row on entry, right after having gone to the toilet in the garden. Everything in there got hit by the dirty protests; Poppy’s squeaky chicken and crinkly rabbit ended up looking like they’d been spelunking in the sewers after a beer and curry festival.

This was a new problem to us, and one we hadn’t been expecting as Beanie & Biggles had both been so easy to toilet train. Research suggested reducing the size of the playpen and removing the bedding; we did that, and we also minimized the use of the playpen, instead giving Poppy more freedom during her waking hours, and putting her in her crate to have proper, uninterrupted naps. This worked rapidly, kicking the toilet training back into forward gear and all but eliminating the tantrums. I guess the playpen had been a half-way house between freedom and the crate, and as such, had not played either role particularly well.

Just as we got Poppy back on track, we knocked Biggles right off it.

As a pup The Bigglet never really had the traditional “mad hour”, but in recent years he’s more than made up for that with daily “I’ve got to get something” sessions, where he roams the house looking for things to steal and “sell” back to us for treats. Socks are normally the principal target, but he’ll make do with other items – toilet rolls, cups, tissues for example . To make up for all the attention being directed at Poppy, Susan came up with the idea that we should provided an augmented “Biggle Hour”, deliberately making caches of socks, hooves and other desirables available for him to grab. The first trial of Biggle Hour worked very well, and left Biggles looking very pleased with himself and his thieving skills. Over the next couple of sessions we could sense his confidence and sense of importance growing, but we didn’t realize we were creating a monster, albeit a monster with a big white furry bottom and over-sized ears. The next night, shortly after going to bed in his crate, Biggles issued a code-red “Woof” – a signal that a trip to the outside loo was required urgently. I opened his crate, expecting him to head down the corridor to be let out through the kitchen, but instead he just leaped straight into our bed. I recovered him, marched him out into the garden to do what he’d claimed he needed and re-crated him. Just as I was drifting off to sleep there was another code-red “Woof”, and again it was all about getting into our bed. I guess when a little boy gets sufficiently important, he should have a Humie bed to sleep in instead of a lowly crate. It took two further nights of woof-interrupted sleep to break him of that belief.

That’s about it for now. I’m sitting on a small mountain of Poppy video clips that I still need put together, but I do have a few more photos ready to share.

Toys are nice

But a bit of cardboard from the compost heap is even better

Tug this..

Preferably not this

Poppy on the big comfy dog toy that Susan made. Like the original “Bonzo” toy, he takes a microwaveable heat pad in his tummy.

Poppy’s been with us for just over a week now and we’re starting to learn her personality. I still can’t get over how affectionate she is: put her on your lap and she starts climbing up until she can put her face next to yours; stroke her and rub her ears and she stares right into your eyes. We are however starting to see signs of the rascal within.

Just like Beanie & Biggles, Poppy has discovered where we keep the big bags of kibble in the utility room. She makes a beeline for that spot any time we forget to keep the door closed and she actually gets closer to the kibble than Beanie & Biggles because she can turn on a sixpence to evade us and is so good at getting under our feet that we’re afraid to move quickly to stop her.

Her toilet training is progressing reasonably well, but somewhere along the line she got the idea that the kitchen doesn’t count as a “clean zone”.  Even now if I place her down on the deck and say the phrase “go be a clean girl” without first closing the kitchen door, she’ll sprint round me or through my legs and let rip on her preferred kitchen mat.

Speaking of the deck, we’d been using it temporarily as a safe, enclosed outdoor puppy loo for those bleary-eyed wees in the wee hours. It made everything so much easier: stagger out of bed without even bothering to put any clothes on,  carry Poppy to the kitchen, pop her out through the door and open it again when she’s finished. Then one night, Poppy discovered that she’s just small enough to sneak through the bars on the gate. The recovery mission – which of course had to be launched immediately and without any hope of putting even a coat on – was not one of my finest moments; it was somewhere between 3 and 5 in the morning, raining (of course) and I had the pleasure of squelching on a little present that someone had prepared earlier.

Poppy may not be related to Biggles, but she shares his love of hooves. We’ve got her loads of puppy teething chews, but nothing beats an empty cow hoof.

An old rabbit-skin tugger has also proved to be a big hit

Of course we’ve been tugging other things around the garden too, and not everything has survived!

Poppy’s been soaking up hours of our time, but we’ve still managed to give our bigger pups some special outings, including a trip to Loudoun Hill.

Although Loudoun’s only a very small hill we celebrated the climb with a round of chicken feet. I’d packed two servings each into my camera bag just prior to setting off, but Beanie somehow managed nick one and leg it into the garden before I could stop her. Biggles looked at me with a hopeful expression on his face so of course he got one too, leaving just one serving for after the climb. Proof, in any were needed, that the big puppers haven’t lost any of their skills.

We’re now a 3 Beagle household and have been for 4 days, and though we’re absolutely exhausted, things are going well. I’m getting ahead of myself though; I should really wind back to the morning we went to get the little noise machine officially called Tannahill Vicki, but whom we call Poppy.

As we set off to collect Poppy, we were far better prepared for her than we’d been for Beanie and Biggles. I’d been round our rear garden fence and made sure everything was solid and as escape proof as any garden reasonably can be. We’d bought a playpen with adaptable panels to create a safe den for poppy in any room of the house, and later on, create a barrier around hazards or vulnerable items like trees, plants and so on that might need protecting from her. We’d got a supply of puppy food and treats; she’d have access to Beanie & Biggles’ vast collection of toys – all freshly washed – and some dedicated puppy toys of her own. Finally, we’d worked out a plan for a controlled introduction of Poppy to our existing furballs.

Pack of puppy food in the free starter pack

Whadya mean it’s not for me?

Some of the toys that have survived an encounter with Beanie & Biggles

About the only thing we didn’t have was a concrete idea of which pup we’d be getting; as we set off all we knew was that Poppy would be one of four girls in the litter, and that the choice would most likely be made for us by the breeder and those ahead of us on the owner list. Naturally the main topic of conversation during the drive was: which one will it be?

On our previous visit to the litter I’d taken shots and bits of video of the pups, trying to make sure we could study all the candidates. We even gave them names based on the shape of their white forehead stripes: Sharp, Broad, Scoop and Dot. I’d tried to be even-handed when taking the shots, but one pup had somehow hogged the camera. Sharp – so named because of her narrow, pointed stripe – had been the one to play most with our bedraggled pink comforter; she’d been the one who had spent the most time around Susan, and she’d been the one to pose for me with the red dumbbell. To a superstitious Yorkshireman like myself, this was an omen: “Sharp” was going to be our Poppy. The feeling was so strong that I bought a red dumbbell toy just like the one we’d seen Sharp holding. Whether my instincts would prove right or not, I was OK with the idea that breeder would decide for us.

As we pulled up Susan raised a question that I hadn’t even considered: what if we’re given a choice, perhaps one that didn’t involve Sharp? In a hurry we decided that in this unlikely scenario we’d just choose the one with the sweetest face, although to be honest, all of them looked gorgeous. As it happened, we did get a choice: two pups were available, and the breeder went away to get them so we could view them up close. The options were Sharp and Broad. Looking at them together and trying to ignore my gut feeling, even then Sharp was the winner. We’d got our Poppy.

You’d think chew manufacturers would take the care to get their spelling right. That “U” should clearly be an “O”

Poppy handled the car ride home very well: there was no noise and no barfing. Next she had to meet to our two senior wagscallions. The goal for us was to get Poppy to settle in her new home and bond with us rather than Beanie and Biggles, while at the same time reassuring Beanie and Biggles that nothing was being downgraded for them. We started on a very gradual, multi-staged introduction process that is still ongoing. The initial meeting was outside, through a double layer of playpen bars. Oddly (or at least it seemed odd to us) Poppy had no fear of these unfamiliar, bigger Beagles, but Beanie and Biggles seemed very uncomfortable about going anywhere near her. We took things slowly, using treats to reward positive reactions and in due course we took away one layer of playpen panel. We then moved inside the house, still keeping Poppy in her playpen when Beanie & Biggles were in the same room. Over the next few days we’ve gradually allowed closer contact between the three of them, but never let Poppy pester her elders. This slowly-slowly approach seems to be working; Beanie and Biggles have become comfortable around Poppy, to the extent that we can have Poppy snoozing on our laps right next to them without any reaction from either party. We’ve also done a few short walks together (with Poppy obviously being carried until she’s had her next round of vaccinations); each of these walks seem to move things forward and make everyone more relaxed about being together, and of course they’re good socialisation for Poppy.

As for Poppy herself, well.. where to start. She came to us a quietly confident little pup, and in the space of a few hours we turned her into an attention-craving, shrieking Diva! We’d clearly forgotten just how easy it is to pander to a gorgeous little pup and fall into a cycle of rewarding ever more demanding behavior. We’ve since reined in our instincts and she’s learning that tantrums don’t work like they first did. As an aside, those early tantrums made us realize that Poppy is going to have a traditional “Aaarrrooo!” howl, something that Beanie and Biggles both lack (though to be fair Beanie does have a blood-curdling death scream that scares animals and people alike if they’re unfortunate enough to hear it).

Another thing that sets Poppy apart from Beanie & Biggles as pups is that she absolutely loves cuddles. She’s tremendously affectionate and would probably spend all day playing and sleeping on a humie lap if she could. It’s very hard to get any work done right now; if we’re not cuddling her, we’re watching Poppy TV, eyes glued to the never ending live stream of cuteness.

It’s also amazing how quickly she’s developing. On the first day she was very unsteady on her feet, easily out-paced by a striding human, and like a cute furry Dalek she was incapable of negotiating steps.

A few days later, she’s fast enough to force me into a jog when she sprints, and confidently muscles her way up both sets of steps to the deck. When I try to keep her to the safety of the lawn, I’m taken aback by the way she’s learned to run round me and time her sprints to evade my grasp; it’s reminding me why I was so crap at Rugby and football as a kid. She’s also learning “sit”, has something approaching “fetch” and knows what I mean when I tell her to “go be a clean girl”.

With each passing hour she’s feeling more like our little girl and part of our pack, and while I want to enjoy every minute of these first few weeks, I’m also looking forward to the time she’s fully vaccinated and able to go on her first proper walk.