We spend a small yet significant part of each day herding Beanie & Biggles out of our utility room, because that’s where all the kibble and treats are stored and they both know it. It’s common for opportunist Beaglets to make an unsanctioned excursion into that room whenever they’ve been let in from the garden, and once a Beagle is in that room, it’s difficult to get them out; it’s a cramped little space and the clothes airer usually impedes a direct scoop and eject maneuver. All that said, this morning we intentionally summoned the Beaglets in there for an emergency clean-up operation.

Stressed-out and short on sleep after our wonderful government’s latest covid roller-coaster ride, I was having one of those mornings where I’m particularly accident prone, or as I choose to view it, “inanimate objects are out to get me”. I needed access to a cupboard, so I shoved the dirty laundry bag out of the way. This in turn knocked over the large and recently filled kibble container, spilling a substantial amount of Chicken and Rice “Burns Alert” all over the floor, not to mention under the fridge and washing machine. I quickly recited the first page of the book of 4-letter expletives, whereupon Susan joined me to help scoop up the spilled kibble. After scarcely a minute of effort we both ran out of patience and decided to call in the professional cleanup crew.

Biggles was the first to arrive. If I were to liken him to a vacuum cleaner attachment, he’d be the big, broad floor sweeping tool. He’s great at picking up a big pile of debris in the middle of the floor, but he’s not so good at cleaning right into the corners and doesn’t cope too well with things that have rolled under heavy objects. Just as he was finishing up the bits that he could handle well, his little wiggly-bottomed colleague appeared.

To continue the vacuum cleaner metaphor, I’d say Beanie is most definitely the crevice tool, sucking up all the little stray bits that the big sweeper misses. She got straight to work and after less than 60 seconds of diligent sniffing and nibbling I was ready to thank her for a job well done. She however was not ready to call time on the cleanup operation; her nose was insisting that some kibble was still hiding under the washing machine. Her nose is never wrong. Not ever.

Reluctantly I grabbed a long handled spatula, got down on the floor and began digging about in the dark recesses under the washer. I flicked out some kibble and Beanie quickly vacuumed it up, but still her nose would not sign off on the job. The spatula wasn’t connecting with anything now, so I prised off an adjoining kickboard, revealing one and one half nuggets of Burns’ best. Now, finally, Beanie was prepared to declare the operation complete, but of course I still had to swear and curse my way though reattachment of the kickboard. It was a bit like the bad old days when I’d take the car into Kwik-fit for a specific fix, then spend the next day sorting out the new problems the “professionals” had generated. Still, if Beanie’s nose couldn’t detect any remaining kibble then neither would that of a passing rodent, so calling in the furry professionals had been worthwhile even if not particularly labor-saving.

We’re now set for the weirdest Christmas we’ve yet experienced, and I’m not the least bit confident things will be any better this time next year. What’s that supposedly Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times” ? Yep, things certainly are”interesting”, and not for the first time I find myself wishing I was Beagle.

Eat, poop, possibly eat poop, have fun and when you’re pooped yourself, slip into a deep untroubled sleep. They’re lucky little pups to have such stable, happy lives, and we’re just as lucky to have them through all of this.

Every so often Beanie and Biggles do things that challenge my ideas about how smart (or dumb) they really are. Just recently they’ve nudged me in the “they’re smarter than  I thought” direction, because they’ve been misuing established signals to get their wicked little ways.

Like most Beagle girls, Beanie appreciates having plenty of room to herself in the humie bed on a morning. In the past she’s been able to secure this space by digging her claws into inconveniently-placed humie body parts, but lately the humies have shown an increased tolerance for Beagle acupressure. As a workaround she’s switched tactics and is now using (abusing) the long established pitter-patter signal to get the personal space she craves. Only people who have hard floor surfaces will likely know what I mean when I refer to “pitter-patter” – it’s the sound made when a little Beagle does the potty dance on laminate flooring to indicate a pressing need for the outside loo. It sounds quiet and subtle, but in practice those nails alternately tapping on wood is impossible to ignore; like a dripping tap it breaks through sleep, conversation, and even the deepest levels of concentration. More to the point, it’s enough to make a humie get out of bed, turn off the alarm and open the door to the garden. While this is happening, the smart Beagle can use her superior agility and speed to run round the humie, sprint back to the bedroom and claim a disproportionately large chunk of bed real-estate. To me, this is the kind of problem-solving I’ve had to employ far too often during my work as a software engineer; when Microsoft doesn’t give you the tools you need to accomplish a task directly, you find ways to use/abuse the tools you do have to get the desired effect.

Similarly Biggles has also adapted his “I need the loo” signals to get other things. He has two signalling methods, the first and most common being pawing of the metal baby gate at the entrance to the kitchen. In recent weeks he’s been using the paw-the-gate signal not for loo visits, but to draw attention to his latest sock acquisitions. In Biggles’ world, socks are the only hard currency; they can be exchanged for goods and services (OK mainly goods – specifically biccies) and when scampering into the living room with a sock flapping in your gob doesn’t get the desired result, well, you have to find another way. And so he has.

The second signal is a woof. I know what you’re thinking – there’s nothing special here; all dogs will woof to get something – but I’m talking about a very particular woof. It’s a single vocalization – a word not a phrase – and has a certain urgency in its delivery that leaves you in no doubt about the meaning: “Get me to a patch of grass now unless you like it messy and wet!”. I first heard it on a long car journey and trust me, no dog-to-English translation was necessary. Until recently it had been reserved solely for emergency pee situations, but now it’s being used get emergency access to the warm humie bed. The woof is issued, the crate opens, and while I open the way to the back door, he leaps into bed for a snuggle. It’s a bit naughty, but hey, it works.

When we originally got the crazy idea of having not one but two Beagles we imagined it would be like all those lovely videos on Youtube, where they’re always falling asleep top of one another in a snuggly puppy pile.  The reality for us was very different. There were never any snugglefests, in fact looking back at those early times I would say that at best Beanie tolerated The Bigglet, seeing him mainly as competition for attention and treats. I’m convinced that she deliberately tried to lose him on early offlead adventures; on one occasion she actually succeeded, using her superior turn of speed to leave him stranded and helpless in a remote corner of what was then our local park. She came trotting back to us alone and happy, expecting a double helping of treats now her bothersome little brother was out of the picture! Thank goodness we’d invested in a GPS collar for him, otherwise that day could have ended very differently. When Biggles got a little older and his get-away-with-anything puppy license expired, Beanie even went through a short but horrible phase of bullying him so badly that we needed the help of a behaviorist to restore order.

Through out all this, Biggles has always doted on Beanie. To him, she’s always been the best, most exciting sister in the world ever, even if she can be scary sometimes. Happily their relationship has become far less one-way over time; the two of them are now a tight-knit team. This is particularly evident in the “we want more treats” ritual that occurs some evenings. It’s the warped result of our longstanding habit of rewarding them whenever they have a wrestling / roughhousing session that doesn’t get out of hand. When both tummies are rumbling, an agreed play fight kicks off; this stops abruptly after about a minute, at which point both participants turn to face me in unison, wagging furiously in the expectation that treats are coming. If those treats don’t appear, our furry Laurel & Hardy look at each other and agree to go for round two, again halting the performance and looking to me when payment is due. That’s teamwork. The other day, Beanie even came to enlist my help when Biggles got himself shut in our office. He’s the kind of silly boy that often gets himself into little predicaments like that, and it’s great that his big sister is now willing to help him out of them.

That’s not to say that Beanie’s little jealous belly doesn’t still make its presence felt, but these days her brother is rarely the target, in fact last week it was – of all things – a Foxhound who found himself on the receiving end. We were on the offlead part of a beach run when I spotted him: a Beagle look-alike hound that had grown tall enough to play basketball. I called Beanie and Biggles back to me as I always do when we see another dog, doing my best to project my voice in a way that is authoritative yet cheerful. I must have done a good job, because Beanie and Biggles instantly aborted their current sniffing projects and came running towards me. In fact I must have done a really, really good job because when I dished out the “blimey the recall actually worked this time” treats, I found three Beagle-like mouths ready and waiting to receive instead of the usual two, one of them belonging to the out-sized, basketball playing pseudo Beagle.  Before I could react, Princess Beanie of SpoiledBratLand decide that this interloper needed to be repulsed lest he gain access to the home team’s treats. I should point out that Beanie is on the small side compared to most other Beagles we meet – she was the smallest surviving pup in her litter and never really recovered – but next to this Foxhound she was an significant titch. That size difference didn’t stop her speaking her mind though, and the Foxhound didn’t want any of it. Beanie gave chase for a couple of yards then returned, while I watched the fleeing hound in amazement. I looked down at The Bigglet to gauge what he was thinking about all of this, and I figured it was something like this: “Yep, that’s what happens if you mess with my sister. She’s the best. By the way dad, have you got any more of those hotdog slices?”