From time to time I have mentioned in the blog that His Royal Highness The Bigglet is a bit of a woofer, or even a lot of a woofer. He’s now just days away from his 13th birthday and though he’s calmed down a lot, he is still a rather vocal little boy. I doubt there’s anyone in our village that doesn’t know when it’s doggy breakfast / dinner time, and it still amazes me that our postie feels the need to ring the doorbell, because we can rarely hear it over the woofage. For all that, Biggles often falls silent at times when woofing would not only be warranted, but also very desirable.

Case in point: last week while we were busy down at the bottom of the garden, Biggles decided he’d had enough of the little alpine strawberries we grow for the pups; it was time for some of the full size things growing under our bird netting. Being The Biggly Boy and current holder of the “Best Lead Tangler of 2021” title, he managed to get one of his rear paws caught up in the net. This would have been the perfect time to call attention to his plight with a bit of woofing, but he didn’t; instead he silently panicked and made a bad tangle worse. By the time Susan caught his struggling form in of the corner of her eye, he’d already managed to tear a nail bed. I grabbed him and held him still while I extracted his foot from the Gordian knot he’d made; expecting an infection to develop on the wounded tootsie, Susan made an appointment with the vet. The UK’s infamous Covid “Pingdemic” delayed this appointment by pushing the vet into self-isolation and we subsequently cancelled it as tea tree oil baths and doggy antiseptic ointment had made further help unnecessary. Regardless, the fact remains that there’d have been nothing to worry about if his Biggleship had woofed in a timely and appropriate manner. One could further argue that the net tangle wouldn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t tried to nick our big humie strawberries, but he is a Beagle so that point is somewhat academic.

Another conspicuous example of non-woofing while in a predicament happened the other morning. I opened the crates so that Beanie and Biggles could join us in bed – which they did – and then of course The Bigglet got a bit too warm, rolled out of bed, and landed on the floor with a loud thud. That was not the predicament by the way – that was completely normal – nope, the predicament happened when Biggles started rolling on the carpet. The roll became increasingly energetic and grunty, until about a minute later I heard a hollow metallic thud after which.. silence. Uncomfortable, worrying silence. I poked my head up above the covers and looked in the direction of the most recent commotion and there was Biggles, trussed up like a turkey in the power cable (unplugged, fortunately) of a fan we’d been using during hot nights earlier in the year. His rolling had apparently been so vigorous that he’d ended up at the other end of the room and somehow wound himself up in the cable. He was looking back at me with an expression that said “Dad, I’ve done it again. Please help!”.

But still, no woof.

Now I can appreciate that in the wild a woof for help when in a vulnerable state might gain the unwelcome attention of predators. That said, Biggles is not in the wild and he doesn’t have predators (well, unless you count his sister Beanie) and I’m convinced he knows this. After all, I’m pretty sure wolves don’t hunt socks and howl when no-one comes to purchase them with a biccie. So why doesn’t he once, just once, woof for help in a genuine emergency? I guess it’s just another aspect of the unfathomable mystery that is Biggles’ brain.

While the governments of the world have been busing taking dystopian nightmares from the sci-fi genre and treating them as how-to manuals, we’ve been busy in the only bit of the world that we can control: our home and garden. In recent weeks we’ve been able to harvest some of the results of that effort, including onions, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, cabbages,cucumbers, peas, chillies and strawberries.

We’ve grown regular-sized strawberries for ourselves, but the small furry types have their own dedicated mini-strawberry plants too

Every day the Beaglets have tried their best to help; sometimes their efforts have been welcome, sometimes less so. It is true that the netting covering our fruit plants is there partly to keep the birds off, and partly to defend against premature harvesting attempts by the black nose brigade. On the days we’ve been mixing manure into the soil, the doggy toothbrush has showed a mysterious tendency to go a rich black color, requiring a particularly thorough rinse after use.

Oh compost! Yes I can definitely help with that!

It’s always good to have a bit of doggy company when you’re planting things..

..because let’s face it, planting can get boring pretty fast

I can confidently say that if a squeaky fox sneaks into our garden..

.. that fox will have a very bad day

Hedgehogs don’t get the fox treatment, but they do get woofed at. A lot. And always in the early hours of the morning, right when the humies would really just like the Beagles to come back inside so we can all get to bed.

Anyone who knows Biggles will be surprised by this last shot. All through his life, The Bigglet has been completely incapable of catching anything. He can’t catch tennis balls, he can’t catch treats, and on occasions when Beanie has caught some kind of doggy virus, he hasn’t even managed to catch that. Yet, against all odds, he did catch a pesky fly, and even more amazingly, I caught the moment on camera.

So despite all the craziness outside, Beanie & Biggles’ little world has remained remarkably stable. This however is soon to change, because one of the furry bundles in the picture below is coming to join us!

Eh? Say that again because I clearly misheard you!

Surely you can’t be serious Dad!!???

Yep it’s true. We went to see a new litter at Tannahill Beagles a week ago and one of the tri-colored girls in it will be ours. That’ll really shake things up and make all the big world stuff seem like a storm in a teacup. I can’t wait but it’s fortunate that I’ll have to, because I’ve got a ton of puppy-proofing to get done before she arrives.

As I mentioned in earlier posts we’ve started using some of our rear garden to grow flowers, fruit and veg. For the first half of the year things went pretty smoothly; most things grew readily and apart from the odd slug nibble we had few problems. Now we’re properly into summer we’re discovering just how hard it can be to stay on top of pests. We’ve found that Neem oil and washing up liquid sprays can help defend against aphids and similar parasitical insects, and that nets can help prevent the deployment of hungry caterpillars and the theft of unripened fruit by birds, but when it comes to larger furry pests, you’ve just go to be ready to shout “Oi! Get out of there!” really loudly.

This is one of those aforementioned “Oi!” moments

Defending against all these destructive pests can be wearing, but earlier this week we were confronted by a genuine tragedy. If you’re a Beagle owner you might want pour yourself a soothing drink and take a deep breath before reading the next bit of this post, because I can promise you, it’s going to hit you hard.

We’re well aware that Beanie & Biggles are heading into their golden years, and we know from friends and neighbors that a decline in health can hit older dogs swiftly and with little warning. We’re also aware that both our pups (but Beanie especially) are skilled manipulators who will find the drama in any situation and milk it for all it’s worth, so when Susan heard a wailing coming from the bedroom earlier this week, she wasn’t sure which situation was about to play out.

Certainly the wailing was soft and pathetic, more like the sound of a Beagle in genuine distress than the indignant complaints of a spoiled furry brat. She hurried to the bedroom as fast as she could and discovered that this time she was indeed facing a genuine tragedy – something that no-one who cares for Beagles would ever want to face.

Susan found Beanie lying on the bed, staring at the window. The Beanster looked limp and somehow smaller than normal, and out came that weak, plaintive wail once again.

“What’s wrong Beanie? What’s the matter?” she asked. And then she saw it. Up on the window sill, out of reach but not of out sight and certainly not out of sniff range, was a bone shaped biccie.

It was in fact a biccie that I had left there earlier in the morning. I hadn’t done it out of cruelty, but out of simple forgetfulness while transferring the contents of my pockets from my dirty jogging pants to a clean pair. I’d remembered to re-pocket my handful of poo bags, my Swiss army penknife and my half-used snotty hanky, but some how the “emergency biccie” – which I always keep in my right hand pocket – slipped my mind. Over the many minutes and hours that Beanie could sense the biccie but not consume it, it grew to consume her very will to live.

In many episodes of Star Trek even the most dire emergencies get resolved in the final two minutes. Similarly this tragedy was sorted by picking up the biccie and tossing it towards the Beanster; one catch, chomp and speed-swallow later, all was well and the end titles could roll.

Never let anything distract you when you’re changing your pants, or next time it could be *your* Beagle being tortured by the emergency biccie that is just out of reach!

Anyway, now that you’ve come through that emotional roller coaster, here are some soothing shots of some of the stuff growing in our garden.

And if that hasn’t soothed you, try scooting your bare bum over a freshly cut lawn. That always seems to help the Beanster.