Ben Narnain

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Paul

Our intrepid Beagles can now add Ben Narnain to the list of Scottish mountains they’ve conquered. In fact they can add it twice, because we went up it twice in the same week.

The first ascent was done very early in the morning in the hope of reaching the top in time for sunrise. We succeeded, in fact we over-achieved, arriving a good hour ahead of the sun. Ordinarily this would be a good thing but on this particular morning the weather was intent on misbehaving. While the rest of the UK was enjoying a heatwave, Scotland was having unseasonably chilly temperatures. On the summit this was coupled with a strong, bitingly cold wind (a gentle breeze had been forecast) and clouds that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be above us or below us. We spent most of our time covered by a cold wet mist which parted only briefly to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the surrounding landscape. I was reasonably confident that once the sun appeared it would burn off most of the cloud, but an hour was an awfully long time to wait, especially for Beanie.

We are NOT amused Dad. Not one little bit.

As you can see I’d brought the doggy coats with me this time, so there was no need to give up my balaclava, but still the Beanster was shivering. Even Biggles was feeling the cold; he insisted on sitting on my camera bag to insulate his little furry bum from the rock. To kill some time I took them for walks round the large summit plateau, and we lasted out until sunrise. We saw the sun briefly, but then cloud covered everything again and the temperature dropped still further, leaving us no choice but to pack-up and head back down. This proved much more challenging than expected because I mistook a sheep/deer track for the path, and our descent became more of a scramble than a walk.

About half way down a group of sheep turned up – possibly the same buggers that had made the decoy path in the first place – and ignited Biggles’ prey drive. He immediately broke into his warbling, grunting and aarfing routine, but the sheep just stood and stared at him, apparently unimpressed and unafraid. Ordinarily I feel sympathy for my boy’s bruised ego when this kind of thing happens; he tries so hard to put on a manly baying voice but he always falls short (imagine Michael Jackson trying to do a Darth Vader impression and you’ll get the general idea). On this occasion however I was just glad that the sheep were standing their ground; as long as they did so, neither of my two hounds would start pulling, and I really didn’t need any pulling at this point. Of course this was the very moment that Beanie decided to show Biggles how it should be done. She was the runt of her litter, she only weighs 11.5kg, yet she has the loudest, most blood curdling baying voice of any hound I’ve heard. She turned the volume up to eleven, the sheep ran for their lives, and now I had two frenzied four-legged pulling machines to steer down the steep, slippery slope of Ben Narnain. By the time we reached the base of the mountain, the sun had burned away all the cloud and the wind had dropped. It was a beautiful warm day, but we were all too knackered and too long without sleep to do anything with it.

Obviously we couldn’t leave it at that, so later in the week we made a second visit to Ben Narnain. This time we had some of the heatwave that the south had enjoyed, and we went up during the day, well-rested and armed with a tent for an overnight stay.

This time everything went right. It was warm, there was scarcely a cloud in sight, and there still was just enough breeze to keep the midges away. We got to the summit in plenty of time for sunset, and found a great place to pitch our tent. And here’s the really amazing thing: we human types actually got a decent sleep in the tent. All previous Beagle-in-tent experiences were best regarded as sleep-deprivation experiments, but not this time. There were no midnight raid attempts on the rucksack, no repeated migration from one sleeping bag to the other, and no digging of claws into human flesh to steal more than one’s fair share of the limited space. Biggles curled up by Susan’s feet, and Beanie snuggled into my stomach like a little furry hot water bottle.

Of course that’s not to say there wasn’t an escape attempt first thing in the morning..

But Susan got a firm hold on their collars, thus avoiding an unplanned extra night on the mountain

So Ben Narnain has been done, but there are so many great views up there I’m sure we’ll climb it again next year. I think it’s actually replaced The Cobbler as my favorite hill!

Beeping Scary

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Paul

It’s funny how Beanie & Biggles get frightened by completely different things, despite having lived with us since early puppy-hood and gone through much the same socialization process. From a fear point of view Biggles is definitely our most robust Beagle. He’ll happily sound off at much larger dogs and cattle/horses even though one might some day break free of its restraints and pay him a visit; he isn’t the least bit wary of cars and large vehicles (I kind of wish he was); and he isn’t even all that troubled by thunder or fireworks.

He is however very much afraid of fire, fast flowing water, and gappy floor surfaces. Quite often when the local farmers have a bonfire going we have put our heads down and sprint to get past it without any panics. On our recent visit to Castle Stalker it took us a good five minutes and numerous biscuits to get across 50 yards of unevenly planked bridge.

I should also mention that he once got scared by Beanie’s squeaky squirrel toy when it wrapped itself round a leg during a play session.

But big vicious green and yellow alligators? No problem for The Bigglet.

By contrast, Beanie has a much longer list of things that put her on red alert. Loud fireworks and thunderstorms are in joint first place, but below that we have: people dressed as Santa Claus, wheelie bins on the move, flapping bin bags, indistinct figures moving in foggy / misty conditions, and our uber-powerful vacuum cleaner which we refer to as The Sniffy Monster.

The world can be a scary place if your name is Beanie

Just recently two new things made it onto her list. The first, rather oddly, is the sci-fi movie Interstellar. Now I should point out that the Beanster has long been my most hardy movie watching companion. She’s grumbled, snored and farted her way through the director’s cut of The Exorcist. Paranormal Activity didn’t bother her in the slightest, and Insidious couldn’t distract her from the pile of monkey nuts I was snacking when we saw it on DVD for the first time.

No amount of Paranormal Activity troubles The Pupplet, and The Exorcist just reminds her of that time she ate far too many frozen peas

However Interstellar – with its paltry “12” rating – had her making a hasty departure from the movie sofa to go and sit shaking on Susan’s lap in another room. The emergency evacuation came shortly after a spacecraft launch sequence, so I figure it was down to a particular sound frequency in that scene. Maybe she thought it was thunder, yet film sequences containing actual thunder don’t worry her at all. Go Figure.

So Interstellar is actually a horror film, but it’s still less scary than Beanie’s other new phobia: devices beeping intermittently because their batteries are dying. It’s happened twice in recent weeks.

The first occurrence was with a smoke alarm in our house; I was immersed in work and that periodic water-torture “beep” was going off for maybe an hour before it finally drove me to do something about it. When I did I discovered little Beanie sitting still and tense, backed into a corner by the front door. I felt bad that the alarm had been troubling her for all that time, but a couple of weeks later the battery in our carbon monoxide detector died and we weren’t even aware of the beeping for half a day or more. Beanie presumably could hear it every single time it went off. Instead of cowering by the door she became very clingy, wanting to stay by Susan and sit on her lap. It was only when one of us happened to visit the utility room (home of the detector) just as a beep went off that we realized what was worrying Her Little Furry Highness.

Needless to say I now have a stockpile of long lasting 9v batteries ready for future emergencies, but some bright spark needs to create ear-defenders that worried little Beagles can wear whenever there’s a scary noise.

I’d be quite happy for Beanie to borrow my ambient-cancelling headphones..

But they just don’t fit that well over silky Beagle lug flaps. Poor design if you ask me!

Algae Agony

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Paul

A terrible tragedy has befallen Beanie and Biggles. Actually, since they haven’t run out of dog food, rawhide chews or dried fish pieces I suppose you could argue that it isn’t that terrible a tragedy, but it certainly is cramping their style. You see their favorite beach is out of bounds due to high levels of toxic algae in shellfish on the Ayrshire coast. The local councils haven’t made a big deal out of it; there are little paper notices up at the beaches warning against eating shellfish, but you have to look for them, and I’ve seen many dog walkers out on the sand as normal – either through ignorance or choice – apparently without any dire consequences. None of them have Beagles however.

Even if I kept our two out of the water and on lead while running at (for me) a decent pace, both of them would still manage to grab shells and assorted washed up sea food. Any time Biggles drops behind for a second, you can pretty much guarantee that he’s just picked something up, or is having a pee, or both. More often than not when I look round I see little crab legs dangling from his mouth, or a razor shell getting crunched in half in his jaws. As for Beanie, well she’s become so fast at snatching and swallowing things that if I don’t spot a hazard while it’s still two yards away, it’s going down the hatch.

I did my best to explain to them what algae is, but I don’t think they really understood, as evidenced by their joint suggestion on how to defend themselves against it.

While blankies work well for fireworks and thunderstorms, they’re totally ineffective against marine toxins

So I’ve used one of those cloud-based page-watch services to alert me when the local restriction on shellfish is lifted, and we’ve just finished our first completely beach-free week since the dreaded palm-oil problem last year. In the meantime we’re making up for the loss with extra trips to the poo-filled dog enclosure at Troon (best avoided when I’m due to brush their teeth later in the day), runs on the grass at the beach-park, and play sessions on our rear lawn.

So it could be much worse. But lets just hope that sea food is back on the menu soon, or we could be facing protests from the furry party.