With identity theft becoming commonplace it’s more important than ever to make sure that you destroy documents containing personal information before disposing of them in the bin. Paper shredders are the usual solution, but they often leave your documents in a state where they could be reconstructed given enough patience and time. For complete peace of mind, you need the Beagle Shred-O-Matic.

The Beagle Shred-O-Matic has the following advantages over traditional, electrically powered paper shredders:

• Easy to use. Just deposit your important documents in a place where no other dog could possibly reach them, and turn your back for a few seconds. The Shred-O-Matic will retrieve the documents and begin the destruction process automatically!
• Environmentally friendly – runs on biofuel!
• All documents are coarsely shredded within a minute. Given a little more time, the Shred-O-Matic will employ enzymatic agents (also known as saliva and stomach acid) to further destroy the paper. Once fully processed the destroyed material is ejected from the rear waste port in a compact, biodegradable form. Rest assured that no-one, not even the most determined identity thief, will want to retrieve your documents after that!

Note: the shredding process sometimes generates unusual sounds. Do not be alarmed – this is part of the Shred-O-Matic’s normal function.

The recent changes to training and treating seem to be paying off, as Beanie’s recall is getting better and she never wanders far from our sides at the park. Just as we’re getting on top of one problem though, others arrive to keep us busy. Beanie is currently going through a heavy shedding and teething phase. It’s impossible to cuddle her without being coated in little hairs – you can even see them on the dark brown areas of her paw bed in this piccie:

And her teething has taken her chewing habit to a whole new level. Nothing is safe! In an attempt to make her mouth more comfortable – and give us a few moments’ peace – I’ve been making “Kongsicles”. I got the recipe (if you can call it that!) from the following site:

Make a super-fast frozen kong for your dog

I don’t bother with the funnel – I just spoon a layer of bio yogurt into the upturned kong, chuck in a small handful of Burns kibble, top it off with more yoghurt and stick the whole thing (still in the cup) in the freezer. Beanie absolutely loves it and it does seem to take away some of the teething discomfort:

Of course the Kong tends to move around as she’s working on it, and occasionally it rolls under the baby gate securing our office. Cue wailing and further chewing of the gate!

This isn’t directly about Beanie, although it does show how getting a dog changes your outlook on things.

Our house was newly built when we moved into it around eight years ago, and like many new properties it had a garden with very poor quality soil. Or to be more accurate, the top few inches loosely qualified as soil, while everything below that was either clay or compacted building site rubble. As a result, our garden would be wet pretty much all year round, and more like a swamp in winter.

We’d been prepared to live with that, but when we got Beanie we quickly found that ten minutes playing in the garden would leave her muddier than an hour running about at the park. It didn’t take long before we realized we’d have to do something to seriously improve the drainage.

There’s no shortage of advice about garden drainage on the Internet, and the most promising approach involved using a buried, perforated pipe to take excess moisture straight into our land drain and out of our garden. This sounded like a lot of work and expense though, and we weren’t convinced it would work. It seemed to rely on water being drawn through the soil into the pipe, but with all that clay to get through I couldn’t see it happening.

Eventually we gave up on the DIY idea and hit the Yellow Pages to look for local drainage experts. We settled on Cherry Landscaping, who seemed to have a more viable approach. They still use a perforated pipe, but they also remove a layer of clay and replace it with gravel to ensure that surface water can make it through to the pipe. We gave them a go and in three days our garden went from this:

(pictured before work started, and after we’d dug and refilled an
exploratory trench)

to this:

It wasn’t cheap by any means, but it’s certainly working. We’ve had very heavy rainfall over the last few days and it’s all drained away – no more impromptu lakes! Unfortunately we’ll have to keep Beanie off it for a couple of weeks to let the new turf bed in, but then she’ll have a brand new garden to play in. What’s betting she tries her hand at digging?

In addition to the regular and “natural” training we’ve been doing, I’ve been following the advice given out at our weekly obedience class to step up the rate at which I give out treats. When we’re at the park, I now hand out a treat for just about any positive behavior – whether it’s returning to my side unbidden after a brief sniffing sortie, or simply looking up at me regularly as we’re walking along. I’ve been doing this now for just about a week, and during that time I’ve seen an improvement in Beanie’s behavior. She’s generally staying closer to me during our walks, and when we meet another dog she’s much happier to carry on walking with me after a quick doggy greeting. The drawback with this of course is that we’d rather not have a large proportion of her diet coming from treats. As a compromise, Susan tried spicing up Beanie’s regular kibble (Burn’s Minibites) as follows:

• Boil up a small amount of cheap mince in water. Once it’s cool, ditch any fat that’s left floating on the surface.
• Liquidize the remaining meat and soak pour it over the kibble
• Cook the kibble to dry it out again

If this is done just before the walk, Beanie’s quite happy to accept this a very healthy and balanced alternative to off-the-shelf treats. However if it’s not fresh, forget it!

One day last week though even the tastiest Baker’s puppy junk food lost its appeal. While walking in a wooded part of the park, we came across a dead bird. I just about had time to think “uh-oh, there’s gonna be trouble” before Beanie grabbed it and scampered off out of my reach. Her head and tail were both held really high – a behavior normally reserved for smelly trophies grabbed from our laundry basket. I only managed to get hold of her when she started rolling about on it to acquire it’s lovely parfum de corpse. Yuck. Needless to say she went back on lead until we’d got a fair distance away.