The Green Barrier Of Mystery

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Paul

After trying and failing to get a professional to fix the section of fence of that was downed by storm “Gareth”, I ended up going DIY on it with the invaluable help of a very knowledgeable ex-engineer neighbor. Unfortunately it was not a quick job; in order to minimize costs and re-use the existing fence panels there was a lot of nail removal, sawing, digging and concreting involved, followed by the insertion of around 500 screws. In all it took a week: a week that left me exhausted, not just because of all the manual labor but also due to the relentless struggle to keep Beanie & Biggles contained on our property and out of the neighboring garden.

While working on the fence our two Beaglets periodically needed access to their outside loo, and this frequently brought me to a standstill as I had to keep them out of concrete-filled wheel barrows, away from rusty but still sharp nails, and retrieve one or both of them from their new supplementary garden.

Every day when work ended I grabbed some metal poles and a roll of green plastic mesh and did my utmost to erect a barrier across the big gap in the fence. While it was daylight and I was out there with them it seemed that my make-shift construction was going to work. I watched Beanie and Biggles probe and test my efforts, and retired to the house confident that I’d done enough to keep the two of them in our garden during short nighttime loo visits. I should have known better.

Not good Dad! I can’t get into our other garden!!

As soon as it got dark Beanie mysteriously gained the ability to teleport directly through the green mesh stuff whenever she wanted. I’d let her out of the kitchen door and watch her as she meandered down a safe distance from the fence, but if I turned away for a second I’d see nothing but empty garden when I looked back. Occasionally she’d re-appear by the time I’d donned my jacket and shoes and found my torch, but mostly I had to go on a Beanie retrieval mission into the neighbor’s garden; sometimes it would be 5-10 minutes before I’d return with a wriggling Beagle maggot in my arms. I found it particularly galling that while the mesh clearly didn’t inhibit The Beanster, it did stop me, forcing me to use the gate. Every. Single. Time.

Initially Biggles seemed to be defeated by the mesh, which was surprising because he’s certainly got enough raw grunt to just force himself through it, leaving a Bigglet sized hole. This apparent success made me over confident, and at one point I let him out and went back into the lounge to drink a coffee, not bothering to watch him at all. I finished the coffee in due course, and then remembered that I was one Beagle short. Opening the kitchen door I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him; I found him stuck on the other side of the green barrier, anxiously repeating the “knock-knock” woof he normally uses when coming back in from the garden. Fatigued by several prior Beanie retrievals I just marched straight over to the green stuff and extracted a couple of poles to make an opening, but before I could say anything to him he marched straight past me making a beeline for the kitchen door. He didn’t exactly break into a run, but he was trotting with the conspicuous urgency of someone who’d had a scare and was trying to hide it. While Beanie’s inbuilt teleporter was a two-way device, Biggles’ was apparently unidirectional and he’d only just found out. That’s what happens when you trade your hard-earned socks for the cheapest teleportation device on eBay without bothering to look at the feedback scores.

Over the next few days I put more and more effort into making my green barrier Beagle-proof. I grabbed extra sticks and poles and rammed them into the ground to tie it down, I laid heavy tools on top of the lower edge of the mesh, and I doubled it up to create a multi-layered construction, yet each evening Beanie continued to pass through the thing at will, leaving no obvious signs of how she’d done it. Biggles took a couple of nights to get over his trauma, but then he starting turning up in the neighbor’s garden too. I never did find out how they were doing it, but I was thoroughly relieved when the proper wooden fence was finally back up and full Beagle containment was restored. I got some pretty dirty looks from Beanie though; she wasn’t at all happy about losing her extended garden.

The Barassie Incident

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Paul

Beagle AWOL incidents are like buses; you can go for ages without having one, and then suddenly you’ll get two in quick succession. The first of them – involving Biggles – could have ended really badly; truly the stuff of nightmares.

I’ve been particularly busy lately and Beagle walks have been more about fulfilling my obligations than enjoyment, but I’ve tried to keep at least one day a week free for more adventurous outings. In recent weeks we’ve visited Loudoun Hill, walked circuits around the Ayrshire gorge, and of course seen a smelly waterfall named after Biggles.

Last Sunday however I was particularly short on time, the weather was dull and wet, and the best I could manage was a short trip along the coast to Barassie. Parking as carefully as possible in one of the suspension-hammering areas by the sea front, I unloaded Beanie & Biggles and walked them out across the sand until we’d got well clear of the main road. Like a seasoned drug pusher I gave my two furry clients a free sample of quality merchandise (chicken) to get them hooked, and made them well aware that I had an even bigger stash of the good stuff in my pocket. I then pointed them at the sea, and unhooked their leads. For the first half hour things went well; the two of them trotted off together in search of sniffs and edibles, only leaving the water to get another fix of chicken.

I’ve let them have off-lead adventures at Barassie several times before and each time they’ve stayed reassuringly close to the water, where there are always little dead crabs and other seafood nibbles to be foraged. I assumed that this time would be no different, but I it hadn’t occurred to me that as this was a Sunday afternoon, scores of other dog walkers had left scent trails between the pavement and the beach. Shortly after we turned to head back Biggles latched on to some of those trails and quickened his pace. I wasn’t overly concerned because he was still by the sea, but then his nose put him on course for the stretch of grass that sits between the beach and the road. I called him to me, but he’d been afflicted by that age old Beagle curse: selective deafness. The Beanster responded quickly however, so I attached her lead in short order and we went off together in pursuit of his highness. He was clearly having a good time, but all the while he was getting closer and closer to the road. The fact that Beanie and I were chasing him only spurred him on, but we were now too close to the road for me to risk changing direction to lure him back to the safety of the beach. He crossed from the grass onto the pavement by a minor road that serves only local resident traffic, but a junction with the busy main road was just a few meters away. In my head I could almost hear the squeal of brakes and the brief high-pitched shriek as I struggled to catch up with him; the crazy thing is I’ve been training an emergency recall word with them for years now for situations exactly like this, but in the heat of the moment I never thought to use it. Very fortunately at the last moment he was stopped by something more basic: a lamppost that needed to be peed on. His cocked leg was just lowering as my outstretched hand grabbed his collar, bringing this latest escapade to a happy end.

It goes without saying that Barassie is now off the table for a while, and I’m grateful that I’ve had a tragedy-free reminder that even older and less disobedient Beagles are powerless to resist the call of a sniffy trail. I’ve also been reminded that all the emergency recall training in the world is useless if I don’t use it when it’s needed!

As I said at the start of this post there has been a second Beagle AWOL incident, and this one was caused by a storm called “Gareth”. News reports made a big deal of high winds and rain in Wales and the North or England, but our local forecast noted only winds up to 50mph and brief showers; these are hardly extreme conditions on the west coast of Scotland and not at all deserving of a name, so we thought little of it. The forecast had underestimated the force of the wind however and unbeknown to us, Gareth flattened one of our fences during the night. Early in the morning his Biggleship requested a trip to the outside loo and returned without incident, but then Beanie went for her morning duties, and decided to make the most of the opportunities afforded by the downed fence. Fortunately for us, the fence merely separates our garden from that of our neighbor who is also a dog owner, so Beanie never got true freedom; unfortunately for our neighbor it’s more than likely that Beanie left a little foul-smelling surprise somewhere in their garden. Wherever that little turd deposit is, it’ll have been carefully positioned so as to avoid obvious detection until squelched underfoot, because that’s how The Beanster rolls.

Beagle HQ

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Paul

We’ve finally redecorated and re-organized our small home office, and it’s taken on a bit of a Beagle theme. The whole point of the office was to create a peaceful, distraction-free working environment and yet somehow it’s ended up with two doggy beds and a treat jar in it.

The pups have always shown a strong interest in this particular room; I always figured this was because it was untidy with a grotty old carpet and lots of interesting rummaging opportunities, but now it’s clean and tidy they’re even more keen to hang out in there. Susan thinks it’s all down to the room’s small size and natural warmth (it has a full size radiator heating a small space, and faces the sun for a good chunk of the day – on those rare days when the sun puts in an appearance, that is). Regardless, my quiet workspace has now become known as “Beagle HQ”.

Er dad, this room is meant to be quiet! Hurry up and take your photos so I can back to clearing my napping backlog.

We’ve made some strict rules about no play-fighting or woofing contests in Beagle HQ, but I still have to deal with urgent blankie-covering requests from her highness The Beanster.

Fix my blankie. Fix My Blankie! FIX MY BLANKIE!

Those silent but intent stares are impossible to ignore. In their own way they’re actually more distracting than a paw on the arm, a pathetic whimper or Beanie’s specialty: the “fart gone wrong” noise. Interestingly we’ve caught Beanie staring at my chair for blankie service even when I’m not in it, which hints at the difference between doggy thinking and human thinking: she’s not knowingly requesting something from a human agent, so much as repeating a behavior that has apparently delivered the desired result in the past. Come to think of it I guess that’s not so different from humans after all; the same pattern-matching probably lies behind a lot of human rituals and superstitious beliefs. For example we use to perform sacrifices and pray to the gods to make crops grow, to see irrational portents in nature, and to vote in the expectation that politicians would carry out our wishes.

That’s one good thing about Biggles: he doesn’t have any expectations about the world and he’s not the least bit superstitious. He just keeps watch for opportunities, and happily takes advantage of them when they appear. For example, if I leave my desk without pushing my chair under it securely, there’ll be a Biggly boy on it when I return, my cup will be suspiciously clean like it’s just come out of the dishwasher, and there’ll be some unwanted modifications to whatever photos or documents I was working on.

Maybe those document modifications are his way of telling me that he’s under-represented in Beagle HQ. Beanie is the subject of the biggest photo on the walls, and she’s even taken over the mouse matt. The next time there’s a decent offer at a printshop I’ll have to square things up, but for now I’ll just have to save my work frequently and get used to shifting a big furry bottom off my seat before I can sit down.