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.

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.

I don’t know how I missed it for so long, but in Fairlie near Largs there’s a waterfall named after my little boy Biggles. Yesterday we visited it! In the photo below you can see Biggly himself in the foreground, and behind him is Biglees Waterfall.

As you’ll have noticed the spelling of “Biglees” isn’t quite right, but I’m confident it’s named after my boy. It’s not immediately obvious why the good people of Fairlie would associate their waterfall with The Bigglet; on the face of it there’s nothing about the area that is suggestive of the Beagle form.

However once you’re there in person – right down by the water – the link becomes clear: the waterfall smells funny. I’d describe it as a cross between a wet Beagle boy and the kind of fart that he releases about four hours after he’s been foraging on our local beach. With such a distinctive whiff it’s totally understandable that the waterfall should be named after his Biggleship.

Curiously Beanie didn’t seem jealous of Biggles’ claim to fame. She just got on with the important business of trying to chomp down on the fungal growths and twigs that were all around.

Perhaps somewhere in Britain there’s a waterfall or other natural feature named after the Beanster. If there is, I can only assume that it spends much of its time wrapped in a blankie and likes playing with floppy rabbits that squeak.