One the face of it, Monkey has it made.  He’s got a fun sister to play with…

.. a big garden to run about in, and Beanie & Biggles’ entire toy collection to play with. He does however have one big problem: everybody and everything is out to get him!

There have already been multiple attempts on his life. When the humies take his pack to the beach – ostensibly to let Beanie & Biggles do some resistance training in the water – it’s really about bumping off the Monkster.

Help! They’re trying to drown Monkey – it’s Monkeycide!!

When food is being handed out he’s always last to receive it, and he’s sure that his humies would happily let him starve to death if he didn’t make such a fuss. Come to think of it, the only way he’s stayed alive so long is through constant vigilance and willingness to make a fuss. And he certainly does make a fuss. Sometimes when I leave the room he becomes convinced he’s being abandoned (even though Poppy, Biggles and Susan are usually still in there with him), and there’s crying and howling. When Poppy gets a chew and won’t give it to him, that’s Monkeycide too and there’s crying and howling. There was even more crying and howling yesterday when he was, for a time, genuinely abandoned and in potential peril.

One of us forgot to double-bolt the gate at the bottom of the garden, and at some point it became unlatched and swung open (a body slam during play might have done it). Two inquisitive little Beagles (well, one of them is little, while the other is shocking large for his age) snook out through that open gate and embarked on their first ever off-lead adventure. I had my head down working in some other part of the garden at the time, and when I finally came up for air I looked around to see what the pups were doing. This is always a good idea because Monkey and Poppy are often engaged in unsanctioned activities, like using the tops of our compost bins as a trampoline until eventually there’s a ripping sound.

Oops.. did we do that?

..And do you think Dad will notice?

Anyway, I saw no pups but I wasn’t immediately concerned; maybe they were hiding round the back of some taller plants, or maybe Susan had let them into the house. I checked the concealed areas of the garden without success, and in doing so I became aware of our neighbor’s dogs barking intently at something. I was about to go inside to look for them when my gaze landed on the open gate, and the penny finally dropped: they’d escaped! I raised the alarm with Susan, grabbed a pair of leads and ran off to hunt them down. The neighboring dogs were still barking, so I got the idea that maybe Poppy and Monkey were close by.  I ran up towards the nearby farm which affords a decent view of the strip of land running at the back of our garden, but then in the lower field of the farm I spotted Poppy. I called her and being a mostly good little girl she ran straight to me. As I wrestled to get her on lead and past the gate that stood between us, I heard Monkey ‘s “Help! It’s Monkeycide! ” howling, but this time it was much more desperate and higher pitched than normal, and I feared that he’d hurt himself. Thankfully that turned out not to be the case; even before I’d secured Poppy, Monkey emerged from the tree line and sprinted across the field towards us. He was clearly fine physically, but genuinely scared at being abandoned not only by his humies but also by Poppy, and I’m not sure who was more relieved when I got a lead on him.

The attempts at Monkeycide continue, but Monkey has at least worked out a way to prevent Poppy from getting away from him ever again.

With 16 kilos of Monkey on top of her..

.. Poppy ain’t going nowhere!

Biggles has just had his 14th birthday. The years are starting to catch up with him in some ways; his paintwork is looking a little faded compared to Poppy and Monkey, and some mornings jumping into bed with us for a snuggle takes more preparation and effort than it did in the past. In other ways, our boy is going through a second puppyhood. He’s back to being as woofy as he was at 14 months and he’s harder to handle than our other three Beagles put together.

For the last few years we’ve had “Biggle-hour”, where we can expect him go on the hunt for food and socks, pawing open cupboards and drawers and knocking things over along the way. More recently this hour has expanded and now we sometimes have entire Biggle-evenings. A cup left unattended in the living room will be snouted, slurped and spilled on the floor – guaranted or your money back. It’s possible he’s going slightly deaf  (a hard thing to assess with a breed famous for selective hearing), but he still senses when the kitchen-baby gate has been left open and sneaks in to create mayhem. On walks it’s often a toss-up whether he or Monkey will pull the most, but when he challenges Monkey to a game of Battleshits Biggles always wins on the number of squattings (though Monkey still has the edge in terms of volume).

There are a few things that might explain this reversion in behavior. He could be going senile (something suggested by the vet after his recent sand-swallowing misadventure), he could also be reacting to competition from Monkey, but the option we feel most likely is that Beanie is no longer keeping him in check. It’s certainly the case that Beanie is allowing him much more latitude than she used to, and his confidence is growing by the day. We might just be seeing Biggles unbound – the noisy naughty boy inside that was previously suppressed by the threat of a righteous telling-off from Beanie.

I would never have expected Biggles to be a good teacher to our youngsters, especially as Monkey and Poppy often look at him like he’s the village idiot when he chases up and down the fence woofing at our neighbor’s dogs.

The strange white Beagle is doing it again Dad. I hope you know why because I certainly don’t..

He has nevertheless taught our youngsters some critical life skills. Thanks to Biggles, they both know how to lunge at garbage in the road when cars are passing, and Monkey has finally learned to cock his leg and do proper pee-marking. One morning, Biggles executed a textbook sniff-and-pee on someone’s gatepost. Monkey carefully watched the whole thing, and once Biggles had finished he moved in, sniffing first at the initial point of interest and then at Biggles’ puddle. I could almost see the penny dropping into place somewhere in his noggin; a cautious but well-executed full leg cock followed shortly thereafter.

Even boys who have suddenly become a right handful get a birthday cake when they turn 14

Happy 14th Mr Biggles! You’re a major woof-head and the pups might think you’re a bit weird sometimes, but we all love you!

This post could have been an uplifting story about two severely deformed carrots from our garden who – after being cruelly rejected by humies and Beanie & Biggles – finally gained acceptance in the mouths of Monkey and Poppy.

It isn’t though. It’s about the short and violent life a potato, because at our house some potatoes have it hard. Really hard.

The potato in question started out in one of our raised beds. Its formative months were fairly uneventful, save for the minor disturbance of Beanie jumping into the bed and having a rummage, and a couple of times when we should have watered the mother plant but didn’t. We’ll never know whether it was Beanie’s rummage or our lackluster watering or just plain hard luck, but when the potato came out of the ground, it looked a little iffy and went straight into the reject bin. As it lay peacefully in the bin maybe the potato was feeling relief that it had dodged a trip to our kitchen, but something far worse was about to happen to it.

Poppy seized the potato out of the bin, sprinted to her favourite toy dismemberment area in the garden and took a big chunk right out of the middle of it. She continued to maim the potato for nearly a minute, before Monkey took an interest and a chase began. The potato was carried in Poppy’s mouth for the first few circuits of the garden, but after a rugby tackle from Monkey it was dropped and forgotten as the pups chased purely for the sake of chasing.

Round..

..and round..

..and round they went, quite oblivious to the fallen potato

When the chase finally stopped, Monkey remembered the potato that had started it all, and went in search of it. Using his amazing nasal powers he found it and subjected it to a further round of abuse. Poppy remembered the potato too, and tried all her tricks to regain possession of it. She crawled up to Monkey and rolled around seductively, but still he kept hold of the potato. She tried to goad him into another chase, but he didn’t budge and didn’t release his prize. There was just one more thing to try…

Still unsure of quite how the whole humping thing works..

Poppy tries both ends of Monkey

Dad help! I’m trying to have a potato and Poppy’s doing really weird stuff!

Since this event we’ve imagined how things might have played out if Monkey hadn’t been a Beagle: the call to the abuse help line, the visit from the police and the supportive officer asking “if it’s not too upsetting Monkey, can you show me on the doll where Poppy touched you?”. There is of course no help line for Beagles, still less for potatoes, and can you imagine a more disturbing way for a potato to shuffle off its mortal coil than being chomped in the mouth of a boy who’s being humped the wrong way round by his “big” sister who’s actually much smaller than he is?