Welcome to the nibble zone. Poppy loves to settle down on a humie lap, but if said humie wants to avoid puncture wounds, said humie had better have a toy or a hoof to keep those needle-sharp teeth occupied. At least humies get much gentler treatment than squeaky chickens. If any squeaky chickens are reading this, spread the word that Poppy is to be avoided at all costs.

A week after her second round of vaccinations Poppy was given the green light for walks in the big wide world. I’d already got her a cheap puppy harness for lead training in the garden, but you know what they say: buy cheap, buy twice; as soon as we went on a “real” walk we realized that it was rubbing under her arms. We retired it from active duty and ended up with this instead:

It has a little bow tie and looks very cute on the Popster, but honestly that’s not why we got it; it was the only one in Pets-at-Home that (1) was a good fit and (2) had a double D-ring fastener across the obligatory plastic clip.

I’ve never been able trust plastic clips on their own; one of Beanie’s siblings died as little pup when the clip on her harness broke by a road. With the bow tie harness the clip becomes redundant as soon as the lead has hooked through both D rings. I’ve gone the same way with collars too: Ezydog double-up collars all round for our Beaglets!

Poppy gets some solo walks to work on her training, but of course she also gets to stride out with Beanie & Biggles. I feel that each group walk has a strong bonding effect, helping the two Bs to accept the little upstart we’ve injected into their lives, and allowing Poppy to feel like she’s a member of the pack. We’re still working hard to prevent Poppy from pestering the seniors – especially in the house – but they are gradually coming closer together; there have been times when Poppy has napped on a senior’s bottom.

As an aside, I must stop referring to Beanie & Biggles as “the seniors” or the “older pups”. At Susan’s suggestion, they’re now to be called “The A-Team”, with Poppy being the current sole member of “The B Team”, even though her name doesn’t begin with the letter “B”. In fact “The P team” or perhaps “The Pee Team” would be more appropriate for Poppy, since her toilet training – though much improved – still leaves a lot to be desired; on rainy days especially she much prefers the unofficial indoor toilet (kitchen floor) to the outside loo. We’ll get through this eventually, but until then I’ll need to buy more socks to compensate for the large number of pee-soaked ones that are still in the wash.

Yeah Dad, I know you told me to “go be a clean girl” but it’s not necessary because I already did one in the kitchen. You just haven’t stood in it yet.

Sticking with the subject of “accidents”, we had a beauty in the en suite bathroom just recently. I’ve been in the habit of taking Poppy in there with me to keep her out of mischief when I’m brushing my teeth and getting dressed on a morning. The floor is tiled so I figured that any little puddles would be easy to clean up. The room also has a free standing bath that is positioned very close to a wall; close enough to make cleaning difficult, but with just enough gap for a little Beagle girl to squeeze into. It’s about the worst place in the house for someone to leave a deposit, so of course that’s exactly what Poppy did. Now she stays in her crate until I’m properly up and dressed.

Yep I pooped behind the bath, but at least your socks didn’t get wet this time!

Both Beanie & Biggles had phobias about things when they were little pups. Beanie feared rustling bin bags, while Biggles more sensibly had a fear of smoke and fast running water. Until very recently Poppy had a fear of puddles, which is ironic given that she makes so many of them. Fast-flowing rivers and energetic waves were just fine but a still, clear and not very deep puddle was a total no-go for The Popster. I got her to face down the puddle demon on a trip to the beach, and since then, she’s just a little wary of them rather than outright fearful.

If you’re name is Poppy, puddles can be scary. Unless they’re yellow and smelly that is.

Another trigger for Poppy is having a barrier that prevents her from getting to her humies. She’s happy to spend time away from us in her crate, but if I’m on the other side of a gate or fence to Poppy there will be wailing and beginner-level arroooing, and if the barrier has enough space for a little girl to squeeze through then it’s guaranteed she will.

This little breakout occurred while I was using our woodchipper. Fortunately a wire panel and growth have now closed this escape route permanently.

She’s also very much a little Beagle now, rather a than generic pup in a Beagle outfit. She knows the sound of kibble hitting a metal bowl, and shoots in from the garden whenever she hears it. We’ve reduced her initial four small meals a day to three larger servings, but she’s still desperate to get into the kitchen to check her bowl bang on four o’clock – the time when that fourth meal used to be served. Like the A-Team members, she’s learned that all the dog food and treats are stored in the utility room and she’s developed some of Beanie’s ninja skills for getting in there. When she succeeds, she’s a lot harder to catch than the two B’s because those little feet of hers move impossibly fast. She’s also acquired Beanie & Biggles’ strawberry picking habits, and often goes mountaineering on the pots to get better access to the last of the alpine strawberry plants.

All the signs are that Poppy’s going to be a very cuddly, mischievous little character. All we need now is for Beanie & Biggles to get more used to her, and for the in-house pee habit to diminish. Either that, or we’ll have to boost our supply of clean, dry socks somehow.

It’s true: The Beanster is now 14 years old! Due to her pesky (very) little sister and other constraints we weren’t able to mark her special day with a big adventure, but we did manage to have a number of mini-adventures, the first of which occurred in the kitchen on the previous day.

Susan prepared a beef-flavored cookie mix then let Beanie, Biggles and myself loose in the kitchen with a rolling pin, various bone-shaped cookie cutters and a bowl of grated cheese.  Things went surprisingly well for the first few minutes; I made a splendid mess of the worktops as I rolled out the dough and cut out bones, Beanie forced her snout into one of the bins (the one containing sharp-edged empty cans, naturally) and Biggles grabbed all the tea-towels. As the bones started to fill the baking tray and the remaining dough dwindled in size, my attention turned to the next task: decorating the cookies with cheese.

This wasn’t easy as Biggles had maxed out on the tea-towels and was now intent on grabbing things from the worktop. Somehow I managed to put cheese hearts on most of the cookies, get the number 14 on one of them, and lock them safely away in the oven without any mishaps.

Baking was due to take around 12 minutes, so we passed the time by tasting samples of the remaining dough.

Even in an uncooked state the cookie dough seemed to be a hit, and we were all keen to see how the finished bones would turn out. In due course the cookies came out of the oven, and as they were cooling on the worktop, Biggles decided he couldn’t wait any longer to try them. Just as I was extracting Beanie’s snout from the bin one more time, he launched himself at the baking tray and grabbed a corner of the grease-proof paper on which the cookies were lying. He could so easily have brought everything crashing to the floor, but instead he pulled off his own version of the tablecloth trick, withdrawing the layer of paper so quickly that the cookies were left largely undisturbed. It was an impressive feat, but I decided to withdraw Beagle kitchen privileges before a repeat performance could be attempted.

On the morning of Beanie’s Birthday we all headed out to Stewarton for a sniffy woodland walk. Stewarton is only a short drive from our home, but with all the lockdowns and restrictions over the last couple of years, it’s been some time since our last visit. It’s at its most beautiful at this time of year, with the autumn colors starting to appear. Little Poppy was great on the walk (I’ll give an update on her progress in the next post) but she only did a shortened version, giving Beanie & Biggles a chance to explore and enjoy the sniffs as a team of two as they have done so many times in the past. Once back home the pressies came out and so did those beef and chicken-flavoured bones.

So our first little Beagle is now 14 years old, and though her hound colors have faded a bit over the years the light in her eyes is still burning strong. Happy Birthday Beanie Girl!

It’s been a drama-filled fortnight. We’ve had highs, we’ve had lows, and we’ve had poo. Lots and lots of poo, most of it in inappropriate places.

Prior to bringing Poppy home we built what we thought was a lovely playpen in a corner of our lounge. It had a little foam-walled kennel in it, a plush bed, a wall-mounted water bowl and lots of toys. What pup could fail to love such an indulgent little den?

Well Poppy clearly didn’t. She seemed to view it as a prison and nothing else. We got tantrums whenever she was placed in there, even if her confinement followed a long and fun play session in the garden. When we stopped pandering to the tantrums, Poppy began pooping and peeing in there. At first we thought these incidents were purely accidental, but one day she soiled the playpen four times in a row on entry, right after having gone to the toilet in the garden. Everything in there got hit by the dirty protests; Poppy’s squeaky chicken and crinkly rabbit ended up looking like they’d been spelunking in the sewers after a beer and curry festival.

This was a new problem to us, and one we hadn’t been expecting as Beanie & Biggles had both been so easy to toilet train. Research suggested reducing the size of the playpen and removing the bedding; we did that, and we also minimized the use of the playpen, instead giving Poppy more freedom during her waking hours, and putting her in her crate to have proper, uninterrupted naps. This worked rapidly, kicking the toilet training back into forward gear and all but eliminating the tantrums. I guess the playpen had been a half-way house between freedom and the crate, and as such, had not played either role particularly well.

Just as we got Poppy back on track, we knocked Biggles right off it.

As a pup The Bigglet never really had the traditional “mad hour”, but in recent years he’s more than made up for that with daily “I’ve got to get something” sessions, where he roams the house looking for things to steal and “sell” back to us for treats. Socks are normally the principal target, but he’ll make do with other items – toilet rolls, cups, tissues for example . To make up for all the attention being directed at Poppy, Susan came up with the idea that we should provided an augmented “Biggle Hour”, deliberately making caches of socks, hooves and other desirables available for him to grab. The first trial of Biggle Hour worked very well, and left Biggles looking very pleased with himself and his thieving skills. Over the next couple of sessions we could sense his confidence and sense of importance growing, but we didn’t realize we were creating a monster, albeit a monster with a big white furry bottom and over-sized ears. The next night, shortly after going to bed in his crate, Biggles issued a code-red “Woof” – a signal that a trip to the outside loo was required urgently. I opened his crate, expecting him to head down the corridor to be let out through the kitchen, but instead he just leaped straight into our bed. I recovered him, marched him out into the garden to do what he’d claimed he needed and re-crated him. Just as I was drifting off to sleep there was another code-red “Woof”, and again it was all about getting into our bed. I guess when a little boy gets sufficiently important, he should have a Humie bed to sleep in instead of a lowly crate. It took two further nights of woof-interrupted sleep to break him of that belief.

That’s about it for now. I’m sitting on a small mountain of Poppy video clips that I still need put together, but I do have a few more photos ready to share.

Toys are nice

But a bit of cardboard from the compost heap is even better

Tug this..

Preferably not this