A Fortnight With Four

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Paul

Why Dad? Why did you get another one?

We’ve had four Beagles for just over two weeks now, and it’s been a roller-coaster of grins, surprises, stress, and chaos. Especially chaos. But where to start?

Going into this with the experience gained from introducing Poppy to our longstanding Beagle family of two, we had the following expectations:

Whatever other problems we might have, we wouldn’t have to worry about having Poppy and Monkey together. Two pups from the same breeder with just a 3-4 month age-gap should get on like a house on fire.
Monkey should be easy to house-train because he’d be able to learn quickly from Poppy.
Beagle puppies are like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition. They always bring the unexpected.

Well, #3 was dead on, and we got #1 sort of half right. From the moment they clapped eyes on each other, Poppy and Monkey did indeed “get on like a house on fire” in so far as a house on fire usually needs the urgent attention of the emergency services. Poppy was the problem; she just couldn’t leave Monkey alone and would initiate play the instant she was near him. On more than one occasion I literally had to pick her up off him while he was trying to have a quiet pee. We rationed and monitored their play sessions to give little Monkey plenty of chances to explore his new environment at his own pace and bond with us, but still every so often we had to unleash the play monster…

I’m happy and relieved to report that in the last few days things have calmed down and now their play sessions are much more balanced and less frenetic.

We’ve just trashed all the potted plants Monkey, I guess we’ve earned a few minutes of quiet contemplation

Something that’s helped us reach this point is the phenomenal rate at which Monkey has developed. It took Poppy several days before she could trot round the garden without falling over, and a good week before she could tackle steps, but Monkey was at that point within a couple of days. Although still smaller and slower than his sister, he’s gaining on her rapidly and loves to test his strength against her in a tug of war…

As I said at the start we expected house-training Monkey to be a breeze, given that he’d have Poppy as a role model. That’s how it was for Biggles all those years ago when he joined Beanie in our home as a seven week old pup. Things haven’t worked out that way at all. He’s learned what “go do your business” means and will happily oblige if – and I stress “if” – we manage to get him out into the garden in time. If it’s raining or cold (which here in Scotland in winter is pretty much every day) he’ll do almost anything to avoid going outside. He’s got a little pot belly and doesn’t move all that fast, but he can still evade capture long enough to leave a puddle on the floor of the kitchen. Even when we do get him out in time and observe him doing the deed, the sneaky little bugger likes to keep a bit of pee in reserve which he then dumps on the floor within a minute of being let back into the house. On top of that, despite our best efforts he has peed in his crate; at one point all his bedding and blankets were simultaneously in the wash, so Susan brought in an emergency reserve blanket from the van, and he peed that too.

For all his deficiencies in this most important area, he’s still not quite as bad as Poppy was. In retrospect, it may have been unwise to expect the current holder of the world records for “Most crate/playpen soilings” and “Most poos deposited in high traffic areas of the deck” to be a good house-training role model.

Poppy shares house-soiling tips with her impressionable little brother

A more pleasant and certainly less smelly surprise is that – aside from being a insatiable play demon – Poppy has taken on an air of maturity since Monkey arrived, so much so that we’re starting to regard her as a member of the A-team with Beanie & Biggles, rather than as the slightly older member of Team Crazy Puppy. Just like Beanie & Biggles, her recall has gone down the toilet, she nicks things from the bins in the kitchen and moans when tea is late. Yep, she’s 100% a member of the pack.

Well that’s it for now – I’ll end the post with a few more shots from the last couple of weeks..

Three Days With Wishmaker

Posted on December 25, 2021 by Paul

On Dec 22nd we loaded our 3 pups in the van and went to collect number four. We’re calling him Monkey but his Kennel Club name is “Wishmaker”. If Poppy had any say in the matter I think she’d call him “Wish Granter” because he’s the best Christmas present we could possibly have given her.

Monkey and Poppy snuggling up on Susan’s lap

Poppy gets on great with Beanie; they often go out on rounds of the garden together, and snooze together when we let them into our bed on a morning. Her relationship with Biggles is still developing; he behaves protectively towards her and he loves running alongside her on lead during walks, but in the house he pretty much just wants her to leave him alone, which most of the time is exactly what she does.

Now closing in on 6 months old, we both feel she’s been increasingly desperate for a play session with another pup. Now, thanks to Monkey, that’s happened.

She’s still going to have to wait a little while before Monkey’s ready to join in the high energy antics that Poppy craves, but he’s growing in strength and confidence very rapidly. On the day we brought him home he was very sleepy, very unsure of himself and not very steady on his feet. In just two days he’s become a fearless explorer, scampering round the upper part of the garden. He’s worked out how to negotiate doors that open outwards and has even clambered up the steps up to the patio – both skills that Poppy took a week to acquire.

He has however demonstrated a few little quirks that lead me to believe that Monkey will turn out to be a fitting name for him. For one thing, he had some strange ideas about drinking water; for the first two days he was happy to drink from the same bowl he eats from and from puddles, but he treated regular water bowls with the utmost suspicion. I repeatedly introduced him to our dedicated water bowls, but he stubbornly refused to drink from them, crying to be let into the patio so that he could slurp from the puddles there.

He also had an issue with pooing; apparently there was an unwritten law forbidding the depositing of poos on grass. He would circle round and round in the lawn, whimpering in desperation, but only when I relented and carried him back into the kitchen would he finally relieve his bowls. I only got him over that one when I remembered that the floor outside the breeder’s kennel was concrete. I took him down to our slabbed patio – the nearest thing to concrete that we have – and hung out with him, refusing to take him back inside until the deed was done. It was touch and go for a while; it was cold, windy and wet, and as much as I wanted him to overcome his poo demons, I didn’t want him to catch a chill. I started cheerleading him to hurry things along: “Go on Monkey, just drop your furry pants and let rip! You can do it little boy!” When he finally did the deed I celebrated quite loudly, and then a few noises from the garden next door told me that our neighbours had heard the whole thing. This didn’t bother me particularly; after living next to us for twelve years they should already know that we’re weird.

One other thing that we haven’t addressed yet: he’s an incorrigible nipple nibbler. Poppy would nibble fingers and arms, but other body parts were mostly safe. Monkey on the other hand will puncture digits if his grip slips while gnawing on a toy, but it’s the nipples that he really wants. I guess he didn’t get that big by being at the back of the queue when it was time for his mum’s milk!

These minor quirks aside, things are going very well. Poppy is over the moon with her little brother, while Beanie and Biggles already seem to have accepted him. I’ll end the update now with just a few more shots of Monkey, Poppy and the gang.

It’s noisy enough with three Beaglets; how bad is it going to be with four?!!!

The Poppy Manoeuver

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Paul

Now that we’ve chosen the not-so-little boy who’ll be swelling our pack to somewhere between 4 and 4.3 Beagles in a couple of weeks, we’re naturally wondering how he’ll compare to Poppy. Will he enjoy cuddles as much as she does? Will he cuddle up with her in a way that Beanie and Biggles have still to this day never done together (except by accident, immediately after which they parted much as in the “Those aren’t pillows” scene from Plains Trains and Automobiles)? And will he have a curious fear of puddles like Poppy?

One thing we do know for sure is that Monkey – as we’ve called him – likes to grip the humie who’s holding him; this should mean that he has no need for The Poppy Manoeuver. What’s that you may ask? Well it’s sort of the reverse of The Picard Manoeuver in Star Trek Next Generation. If you’re a Trek nerd like me, you may remember that the Star Trek costumes tended to ride up during scenes; to remedy this the actors – Patrick Stewart in particular – would tug them back down at the waist on a regular basis. By contrast, when Poppy’s sitting on a humie lap she tends to slide down towards the floor. She does nothing to stop this, so once every minute or so you have to put your hand under her bum and hoist her back up. BTW if you’re wondering whether she’d eventually save herself if we didn’t intervene, the answer is “no”. As an experiment one afternoon I did let gravity do it’s thing and she ended up deposited in a heap on the rug between my feet, looking a little surprised but otherwise unperturbed.

As I mentioned in my previous post a bond has developed between Beanie and Poppy. Poppy loves to follow the Beanster on her morning rounds of the garden, and likes to rub her cheek against Beanie’s whenever they’re together in the living room. They get quite close when snoozing on the sofa and in our bed too, but they’ve still not curled up together in the classic Beagle fashion.

I think Poppy’s starting to win over The Bigglet. He’ll still give her an Elvis-lip snarl if she strays close to him when he has a precious resource such as a sock, but when they’re out on a walk they do seem to enjoy each other’s company. Just recently I’ve been doing short sprints with all three of them together on extending leads, and Poppy and Biggles have taken to running alongside each other with big grins on their faces.

Poppy has now learned most of the little rituals we have with Beanie & Biggles. She knows that after a fun play session everybody runs to the kitchen baby-gate to get treats; she knows about “half-way biccie” on walks, and about “final wees” and “crates” at bedtime, and that the “if one puppy…” rule dictates that when one beaglet gets treats, all beaglets get treats. Come to think of it that rule is getting burdensome with three Beagles and it’s going to be even worse with four, but it is one of the key rules in The Book of Beagle Law so we’re stuck with it.

Time is against me now so I’ll quickly end the post with a few more pics..