A quick catch-up from the last few days..

While sheltering from the rain in our local pet shop we spotted some very smart looking doggy raincoats going cheap. Beanie in particular really hates the rain and shivers pathetically whenever she’s caught in a shower, so we bought a couple. Very shortly afterwards the rain stopped and the sun came out. Now I’m not complaining about that you understand, but the timing…

With the forecasts assuring us of continued good weather we headed down to Irvine beach for a long, relaxing stroll. The weatherman got it right, because we had an absolutely beautiful afternoon walking on the sand..

On this occasion we decided to keep Beanie & Biggles on lead. I’m glad we did, because on the way back we came across this:

Yep, the tide washed in a dead sheep. Curiously our sheep-mad little boy was very slow to spot it – he and Beanie had spent most of the walk excitedly “following” horse tracks the wrong way up the beach. If they’d have used their eyes instead of their noses they might just have had a chance at finding the horse that made those tracks. I’m convinced that all this stuff about Beagles being amazing scent hounds is complete drivel. We’ve got to two Beagles now and both of them are completely hopeless in the nose department.

Anyway, Biggles kept sniffing away at the horse hoof indentations in the sand until I knelt down to take a photo of that stomach churning sight, at which point he came over to investigate. There was a brief moment of stunned silence, then an indignant bark, and then of course he went ballistic and tried to pull me straight into that putrid heap of a sheep.

Both our pups slept very soundly after that walk, I can tell you!

Earlier today our two Beaglets went swimming at Allers farm (videos to follow tomorrow) and though ready for a nap afterwards, they selflessly hung around to “help” us tidy up the garden. Biggles was particularly helpful while I was trying to make a wooden frame for some flowers Susan was planting. I was going for a simple rectangular shape but Biggles felt that a more avant-garde design was needed. Every time I turned my back the Bigglet carefully rearranged all the pieces. In a desperate bid for peace I handed him an offcut. It worked. Half an hour later I’d fashioned a solid frame to hold the soil in place, while Biggles had fashioned a block of wood with teeth marks in it. Good job all round, I’d say.

And finally I’ll explain the title of this post. The other night we went to see the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX theatre in the Glasgow Science Centre. It was pretty good, although we sat a bit too close to the screen which meant that all the characters had strangely prominent chins. Anyway, when we first saw engineer Montgomery Scott (Scotty) he’d been dumped in a little research station in the middle of nowhere. Why was he exiled? Well it wasn’t due to his criminally unconvincing accent; it was because he’d used Admiral Archer’s Beagle (Porthos) as the test subject in his transporter experiments and it had all gone horribly wrong. Shame on you Scotty, shame on you.

We’ve been contacted by the owner of Alfie, a little Beagle boy living in Southampton who just happens to have been fathered by Sheriff (aka Redcap Renaissance). That makes him a half-brother to Beanie & Biggles, and you can really see the family resemblance in the following photo:

I think he’s got a very similar face to Biggles. Alfie’s owner – Hollie – also sent us a recent shot of Sheriff:

He’s looking a little grayer now but he’s still going strong, and is apparently a very laid back kind of a Beagle. His children however seem to be anything but laid back – it sounds like Alfie almost as much a handful as our two. Almost!