It’s true: The Beanster is now 14 years old! Due to her pesky (very) little sister and other constraints we weren’t able to mark her special day with a big adventure, but we did manage to have a number of mini-adventures, the first of which occurred in the kitchen on the previous day.

Susan prepared a beef-flavored cookie mix then let Beanie, Biggles and myself loose in the kitchen with a rolling pin, various bone-shaped cookie cutters and a bowl of grated cheese.  Things went surprisingly well for the first few minutes; I made a splendid mess of the worktops as I rolled out the dough and cut out bones, Beanie forced her snout into one of the bins (the one containing sharp-edged empty cans, naturally) and Biggles grabbed all the tea-towels. As the bones started to fill the baking tray and the remaining dough dwindled in size, my attention turned to the next task: decorating the cookies with cheese.

This wasn’t easy as Biggles had maxed out on the tea-towels and was now intent on grabbing things from the worktop. Somehow I managed to put cheese hearts on most of the cookies, get the number 14 on one of them, and lock them safely away in the oven without any mishaps.

Baking was due to take around 12 minutes, so we passed the time by tasting samples of the remaining dough.

Even in an uncooked state the cookie dough seemed to be a hit, and we were all keen to see how the finished bones would turn out. In due course the cookies came out of the oven, and as they were cooling on the worktop, Biggles decided he couldn’t wait any longer to try them. Just as I was extracting Beanie’s snout from the bin one more time, he launched himself at the baking tray and grabbed a corner of the grease-proof paper on which the cookies were lying. He could so easily have brought everything crashing to the floor, but instead he pulled off his own version of the tablecloth trick, withdrawing the layer of paper so quickly that the cookies were left largely undisturbed. It was an impressive feat, but I decided to withdraw Beagle kitchen privileges before a repeat performance could be attempted.

On the morning of Beanie’s Birthday we all headed out to Stewarton for a sniffy woodland walk. Stewarton is only a short drive from our home, but with all the lockdowns and restrictions over the last couple of years, it’s been some time since our last visit. It’s at its most beautiful at this time of year, with the autumn colors starting to appear. Little Poppy was great on the walk (I’ll give an update on her progress in the next post) but she only did a shortened version, giving Beanie & Biggles a chance to explore and enjoy the sniffs as a team of two as they have done so many times in the past. Once back home the pressies came out and so did those beef and chicken-flavoured bones.

So our first little Beagle is now 14 years old, and though her hound colors have faded a bit over the years the light in her eyes is still burning strong. Happy Birthday Beanie Girl!

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.