This year we decided to start our Christmas celebrations on the shortest day (21st Dec here in the UK), as we’ve been really feeling the ever shorter grey days recently and it seemed right to mark the turning point. Inevitably this meant giving special posh nosh and treats to Team Beagle, and giving them early access to some of their pressies. This was very well received by the pups..

The pups got a crinkly fox and a squeaky cow. The fox got all the early attention..


..But then the cow got its moment in the spotlight.




I regret to inform you that while Mr Fox is still with us – albeit with horrific facial injuries and severly depleted white filling – the cow was retired from active service in less than an hour.

The posh nosh aspect disrupted our usual doggy meal preparations. We’ve got into the habit of preparing the next morning’s doggy breakfast at the same time as their teatime meal; it just makes things easier to get them fed before the next day’s first coffee has taken effect. However, with actual chicken going into bowls instead of kibble, we forgot to do this and I only noticed the omission once the pups had gone to bed. I’m very much aware that Beagle hearing is superior to my own, and that both Monkey and Daisy are very attuned to the sound of kibble being poured into a bowl, but I figured I could get away with some late night prep just this once if I took appropriate precautions. I carefully closed the bedroom door, turned up the volume on the second Matrix film which was playing in the lounge, then snook into the kitchen, closed that door, then proceeded into the utility room to do the actual dishing out and closed that door behind me too. So just to recap, I had three closed doors and a noisy action-filled movie to muffle any inadvertant sound leaks from my untimely bowl-filling. Surely there was no way Monkey or Daisy would hear me?

Wrong. Very, very wrong. Daisy definitely heard me, and began shrieking to be let out of her crate the instant the first piece of kibble touched down in here slow-feeder plastic bowl. Realising that the game was up, I hurried through the remaining preparations as quickly as I could, headed back into the lounge – closing all the doors behind me – and tried to bury myself in the movie. Surely Daisy would calm down and surrender to sleep in a few minutes? The clock notched up five minutes of concentrated wailing, then ten, then fifteen. I saw no way out of this but directly through it; to give in would have set a very dangerous Beagle precedent, and anyway what else could I have done? Let her get up and have a small down-payment on her breakfast? Bad idea.  This was grin-and-bare-it time. The film was playing at a pretty high volume, but Daisy’s volume was turned up even higher. She peaked at 2o minutes with a screaming fit that would have had the neighbours calling doggy rescue charities if they’d heard it, but then the volume and the frequency of vocalisations subsided. All this from the little girl who needed trips to the Sensory Depravation Restaurant to get her to eat properly when she was a pup.

Monkey undoubtedly was awake and aware thoughout the whole saga, but he never made so much as a squeak.   I do note however that when I finally went to bed that night, he let out a grumble and sigh as I entered the room as if to say “Oi, be quiet Dad, there’s puppies trying to sleep in here.”

Beanie & Biggles famously claimed dibs on a dead cow on the beach, while Poppy got herself a pair of bunny pants, but Monkey & Daisy have just landed the winning card in the game of doggy Top Trumps by scoring a whole whale.

Local papers had noted that a dead whale had washed up on the beach the previous day, but they’d also indicated that the coastguard was on the verge of removing it, so I expected it to be gone when we arrived for our run. Daisy immediately knew better, smelling something novel and exciting while we were still in the car park, but my nose remained blissfully unaware of the whale until we were less than a couple of hundred yards from it. By that time, the arm I was using to hold onto the leads had already been stretched about an inch longer than it’s counterpart.

I made a point of keeping a good distance from the carcass; its tongue was hugely swollen and apparently Police had been warning walkers not to get too close for fear that the whale’s guts could explode. If only the council had thought to erect “Beware: exploding whale” signs on the beach; that would have been very Pythonesque. They had however turned off the electronic sign informing visitors of the water quality, but if it had been working I guess it would have read “Absolutely minging”. We didn’t go into the water, and we didn’t approach the whale, but the beach’s resident tractor did both, tentatively trying to nudge the body further into the sea while avoiding getting trapped in the wet sand. Monkey became very interested in the tractor but Daisy’s attention never wavered from the whale and the jog back to the van was punctuated with lots of “throwing out the anchor” manoeuvres. In the end I actually had to pick Daisy up and carry her part of the way, otherwise we’d have spent the whole day at the beach.

As Daisy approaches her first Christmas, I’ve been thinking about how much she’s developed. She’s no longer that timid little thing who used to get so overwhelmed by groups of kids or other dogs that she would squat for appeasement pees; now she’s right in there loving the attention. Her confidence when meeting others has filtered through to Monkey, who had become downright fearful during that brief period of being a solo dog.

During her first month with us it was often a struggle to get her to eat her meals, so much so that we designated a room as her private “sensory deprivation restaurant” – a place where there’d be nothing to distract her from her food. Any time we let her have a novel new treat we had to set aside plenty of time to let her play with it first; it took her about 20 minutes to get round to eating her first chicken foot. All that has changed; she has a fully developed Beagle appetite and can dispatch any food item faster than Monkey, even though he has larger and more powerful chewing gear.

She’s our cuddliest Beagle by far; if she’s going to have a nap, she’ll find a humie lap or snoozing Monkster to curl up on, and often prefers to snuggle when she gets a chew toy she really likes.

She is however thoroughly spoiled. Spoiled by us of course, but also spoiled by Monkey. I can tell from her interactions with other dogs that her puppy license is starting to expire, but the Monkster remains very protective and indulgent of her. If she wants a toy he’s got, it won’t be long before he lets her have it. A couple of days ago they both snook into a fenced (supposedly Beagle-free) part of the garden; I announced a biccie scramble to recall them and while Monkey was by my side in a flash, Daisy couldn’t find her way out and began to panic. Biccies were on the ground right under his nose, but Monkey left them untouched to help me rescue Daisy. I hope Daisy realises how lucky she is to have such a gentle and caring big brother.

One thing she certainly doesn’t realise, or at least has no desire to respect, is the need to keep her nose out of our food when we’re having a sofa snack. Rules, boundaries and limitations? Not for Daisy if you don’t mind, and if you do mind, well they’re still not for Daisy. She’s more of a food pest than Beanie ever was, despite us never once giving her food scraps from our plates. We are slowly winning this war, but it is a struggle, and it’s not helped by the fact that she’s so cute.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Christmas, but I am looking forward to it this year with our newly restored team of two Beaglets.