Even before I’d left the shop a little voice was telling me that I’d made a bad purchasing decision. I’d been tasked with getting a box of slow-release plant food, and on the face of it my choice was a good fit: the blurb said it would keep releasing nutrients for weeks, it was well priced and it came with 25% extra free. Still there was no getting away from the fact I’d just paid good money to get 2.25kg of dried, sanitised chicken droppings, knowing full well that our Beagles have a major poop habit. I kept reassuring myself that neither of Beanie nor Biggles had ever shown interest in fresh chicken poop; one of the farms on our regular walks has chickens running around freely, and though the pups have sometimes returned with fowl-smelling shoulders, they’ve never snacked on the stuff.

When I showed the box to Susan she reacted as though I’d returned with magic beans instead of plant food, but she used it anyway. It’s possible that in the morning we’d have woken to multiple giant beanstalks towering over our garden, but those pellets never got a chance to do their thing.

It was night time when it happened. After the ritual teeth-brushing I escorted the pups through the kitchen and out into the garden for their pre-bed toilet visit. It was warm and still outside, and by the time I’d used my toe to hasten Biggles’ departure through the patio doors a load of midges had sneaked in and were now dancing around on the ceiling. I quickly closed the door and spray-killed the nasty little buggers, thinking to myself “good job I don’t have to go out there right now”.

As is often the case I heard Biggles getting into a very active discussion with the neighbour’s dogs, so I figured that Beanie would be the first one back. I waited, and I waited, and then to my surprise it was Biggles that came trotting up to the doors. I let him in, spray-killed a few more midges, then went to get a couple of dental treats – the last reward of each day, given only when both pups are tucked up in their crates. I fully expected to see Beanie waiting impatiently at the door when I got back – but still she wasn’t there. Biggles began scratching at the kitchen door and grumbling; he was focused on getting to his crate and earning his treat, but that couldn’t happen until Beanie had returned. Where the hell was she?

I turned off the lights so that I could see out of the windows and after a moment of adjustment my eyes locked on to the white tip of her tail. She was busy doing something in the corner of the patio, but there wasn’t enough light to see exactly what that something was. I briefly opened the door and called to her, shutting it before any more midges could get in. I saw the tip of her tail moving across the patio, and I assumed that she was heading back up to the door. I was wrong. The tail stopped at another location – just by a bench on the patio – and I could see it wiggling a bit as the front end of the Beanster got to work on something else. After a minute the tail moved on again and now I recognised the pattern: the little bugger was touring all our plant pots and it was easy to guess what she was doing at each of them! There was nothing for it, I just had to go out and grab her before she filled her gut with chicken manure.

I lost track of how many midge bites I suffered as I chased Beanie round the garden with my torch; I only caught up with her when she stopped off at the really big pot containing our little apple tree. She knew she was in trouble, but on the other hand those pellets were really tasty. Commands to get back in the house weren’t cutting it so I lightly smacked her bum and that finally did the trick! She hopped off the pot and scampered up to the kitchen door. Once inside I cursed her as I fired a bit more insecticide at the kitchen ceiling  and felt my midge bites, but when we all finally arrived at her crate she still wanted her bed-time treat, and of course the spoiled little brat got it! I fully expected there to be some unwanted side-effects after all that chicken poop; so far there’s been no vomiting or sickness, but then again, it is meant to be slow release…

The Bigglet may have his faults, but at least he doesn’t have a chicken poop habit!

It’s been “all change” at Beagle HQ over the last week. We’ve finally retired some of our oldest office furniture and replaced it with new stuff, and that of course has meant some intensive flat-pack assembly sessions.

In the past Biggles has been my go-to companion for this kind of work; he rarely gets in the way, and even the most poorly designed assembly guide seems easier to handle when his furry head is studying it right next to mine. If things get a bit tense he diffuses the situation by rolling onto his back to display his bits, and if that doesn’t work, you can’t beat a well-timed sulphur-heavy fart. Unfortunately this time around it wasn’t Biggles that came to help me, but Beanie, and she isn’t a good assistant at all. You see it’s not the assembly of the kit that interests her; it’s the disposal of all the paper, cardboard and packing materials, and she’s hell bent on doing this before the item in question is built. Turn my back for a minute and all those little bags of screws, bolts and washers are shredded – their contents strewn all across the floor – and important chunks are missing from the instruction leaflet.

Biggles should have been my assistant on my recent flat-pack marathons

But instead I got this..

Eventually I just had to frogmarch my little “helper” out of the room and close the door. Yes, to my shame I actually had to exclude the Beagles from the room designated as “Beagle HQ”. The exclusion was temporary however, and they got to be the first to check things out once all the sweating and swearing was over. Only time will tell if the chinrests on the new chairs (incorrectly described as “armrests” in the documentation) will pass muster!

For a while now I’ve been signed up to what seems to be the last DVD rental service in the UK – CinemaParadiso. Each time a new disc arrives I make popcorn and have a screening in what I refer to as our “posh” lounge, so named because it’s had less exposure to Beagle vomit and bum-wiping than our other rooms. While the popcorn guarantees that I’ll start off with two Beagle watching partners, usually a short way into the movie I’ll be down to just one: if the film is a horror, it’ll typically be Beanie, and for sci-fi it’ll be Biggles.

It makes sense that Beanie wouldn’t be overly fond of sci-fi movies; they’re often filled with beeping noises which can be very scary to little Beagle girls, whereas blood-curdling screams are just fine. As for Biggles, well I didn’t honestly think he had any particular aversion to horrors – until I watched “The possession of Hannah Grace” the other night. I didn’t find it to be a particularly scary movie, but Biggles apparently did; shortly after the start I heard him whimpering softly from the other sofa. When I made room for him next to me (which wasn’t easy because I had to shift Beanie up a bit), he came over like a shot and wouldn’t relax until I’d wrapped my arm right round him to provide both a cuddle and a chin rest. Ironically he’s the one who most often looks possessed – tickle that big white tummy of his just right and his eyes roll back in his head like a scene from The Exorcist.

Speaking of horrors, Beanie has proved once again that she is one, by tearing up a new plant we’d got for the back garden. She’s got form for this kind of thing; as a puppy she was a serial flower-killer, but we were hoping that she’d grown out of it by now.

Directly after planting she was keen to examine our work and did nibble a bit of compost (who wouldn’t?), but a cautionary “Oi! I’m watching you!” put a stop to that. Nearly a whole week passed without any further incidents, but I suspect that – as with TV’s Dexter Morgan – Beanie was trying to resist the urges of her “dark passenger”. Suddenly one evening the dark passenger won, and in the aftermath I found bits of plant and soil strewn all over the patio. No dirty paws or mucky snouts were in evidence, but the frenzied nature of the attack made it clearly a Beanie crime scene. The plant hadn’t been simply dug up – it had been ripped out of the soil and shaken like a Polaroid picture. Once a plant-killer, always a plant-killer!