Every morning in our house starts with a bang. Several bangs in fact, typically around six o’clock in the morning. These bangs are Beanie pounding her paw against the front of her crate; her way of telling us she wants to be let into our bed. Once she’s in there our sleep remains disturbed as she repeatedly changes her mind about whether to be above or below the covers, or tries to shove one of us out so she can lie horizontally. When we finally give in and commit to getting up, we then have to deal with her brother, Biggles.

Biggles has an entirely different morning routine. The moment you approach his crate he rolls over onto his back, and refuses to get out until his tummy has been sufficiently tickled. At least I assume it’s a tummy tickle he’s after. I suppose it could also be his first waking reaction to the lethal fumes his little bottom has been generating all night. Either way, you have to kneel there and tickle away for a couple of minutes until he emerges, then quickly usher him downstairs and out into the garden before he’s tempted to use the Beagle en-suite (the left hand side of our chest of drawers) for his first pee of the day.

Here’s my first attempt to capture the Biggles part of the routine on video. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the clip; I’m not too good with the camera that early in the morning, the light level is very poor, and those Biggles fumes are quite potent:

Of course the fact that I was filming piqued Beanie’s interest, and when Beanie’s on the move Biggles always follows suit, so this is a much shortened version of the morning ticklefest.

Most of the regular visitors to Beanie & Biggles blog know that they are in fact half brother and sister. They both have the same dad (Redcap Renaissance – or Sheriff). They also share some Newlin blood on their respective mothers’ side.

When we got Biggles we deliberately sought out one of Sheriff’s pups as we wanted another just like Beanie. Beanie’s mum wasn’t having any more litters so that wasn’t an option, and upon careful research it did seem that a lot of Beanie’s characteristics came from her dad’s side.

As it turned out, it would be hard to find a pup that was more different from Beanie! As a very little boy Biggles seemed huge. He was twice the weight Beanie was at the same age and incredibly chunky compared to her. Markings were of course very different, and personality too. Although they always shared the same sweet, pretty face, athleticism and delightful temperament!

Just take a look at these pictures of Biggles and Beanie beside similar poses from their dad. Don’t you think they each closely resemble one side of their dad?

For those that don’t know Sheriff he does, as the photos show, have completely different markings on each side!

For the last four days we’ve been taking a tag-team approach to our park walks; I give Beanie an offlead session while Susan takes Biggles for an on-lead walk involving lots of recall training and games. About half-way through we swap, so Biggles gets some offlead time and Beanie gets training and a good sniffabout. The main reason for this change was to curb the wanderlust they get when they’re together ( especially now Biggles is in the particularly troublesome 5-8 month period when recall takes a nosedive). It may also put a stop to the pack behaviour they’d been displaying when playing with other dogs, which though harmless in itself did seem to incite the others to naughtiness and squabbling.

So far it’s working well for both of them. Instead of relying solely on each other for entertainment they’re having to play with other dogs.

Beanie’s back to chasing with other dogs, which keeps her safely in the field

.. and she’s loving every minute of it

For some reason it’s suddenly become a lot easier to get them playing with us outdoors too. Maybe it’s the extra obedience training we’re doing with them each night, or maybe we’ve finally found the right toys. Beanie just loves her treat-filled tennis ball, and is getting much better at bringing it back to me so I can liberate the goodies inside. She’s perfectly capable of getting them out herself, and sometimes does, but I think she prefers the excitement of grabbing them as I shake them out of the ball. Biggles on the other hand doesn’t really have patience for the treat ball; his passion is for Air Kong squeaky tennis balls. Sophie had some when they played together recently, and they made such an impression on him that Susan made a special trip out to the pet shop to get some. It takes a little effort to get him interested in them at the start of his off-lead session, but once he’s had one in his mouth and heard it squeak, he’s hooked.

He’s even getting quite good at bringing them back to me for a treat and so I can throw them again

A beagle genuinely interested in ball games – it really is possible!

So far we haven’t had any major incidents of them running way off out of sight, though there have been moments when one or the other of them has thought about it…

..but they only go so far, then come running right back for a treat. I think the on-lead recall training is a big part of that, and it kind of fits with the training that working pack Beagles receive. When a newbie is old enough to join the pack, he/she is apparently chained to one of the more experienced dogs, so they have no choice but follow the commands of the hunt leaders. After a while the behavior becomes almost hard-wired.

I’m also happy to report that Biggles seems to have got over the shock he had when the demon sausage came to visit, and he’s starting to lose his puppy looks and turn into a fine, confident young boy.

A heroic pose, but notice he’s still got his squeaky ball in his mush!

Meanwhile Beanie’s agility and obedience training is going from strength to strength. Susan took her for another session in the agility barn this week to work on issuing commands from a greater distance. It’s the only way to go; it was obvious from the previous session that Beanie was having to slow down or even pause to wait for direction from Susan. Two legs just can’t keep up with Beanie’s turbo-charged four-leg drive! Having said that, giving well timed and clear directions isn’t easy when you’re no longer seeing the course from the same orientation as your dog..