As a free resource for learning new skills, Youtube is fantastic. As a platform that puts lifestyle ideas into your head that can’t possibly work if you live in Scotland and/or have spoiled Beagles, Youtube is the work of the devil. Case in point: the back garden movie night.

Lured by clips of US folks watching films in their gardens on rugged, comfortable outdoor seats by a glowing fire, we invested in a budget projector, screen, and firepit, and ordered lengths of 2″ x 4″ timber from which to make “Adirondack” chairs and footrests. I made the chairs and footrests, bought hotdogs and a pack of marshmallows to toast, and soon we were all set for a night at our own private cinema with a pair of Beagles snoozing peacefully on our laps.

I’d taken great care over the choice of firepit; it had a mesh dome cover and all-round restraining bar to keep intrepid girls like Beanie from getting singed and going to the vet, while reassuring more cautious boys like Biggles that the fire wasn’t about to break free and go after them.

Things were going well until the burning wood in the pit let out a sharp “pop”. Biggles was sitting on Susan’s lap, wrapped up in a blankie for extra security when this unexpected sound spooked him. His head popped up, he froze for a moment, and then made an emergency retreat to the kitchen door. Fear is more contagious than any virus, and soon the Beanster was right up there with him. Biggles issued a somewhat urgent version of his distinctive “knock-knock” woof, while Beanie adopted an extra wide sit.

In case you didn’t get that last bit, let me explain: the width of Beanie’s sit is a key indicator of her mood. A compact sit shows she wants something but is willing to wait patiently, possibly as long as several seconds, before her demands are met. A wide sit – which I often refer to as a “John Wayne Puppy Sit” – indicates that she has a legitimate grievance which should be addressed post haste. If things get bad, a John Wayne sit can be accompanied by woofing to emphasize the urgency of the situation. If things get even worse, the sit gets wider still and we’re into Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits territory. Right there, in front of the kitchen door, a full-on JCVD puppy sit was in progress.

“You’d better let them in and put them to bed” Susan advised.

I had to agree. It was a shame though; I’d really wanted the four of us to be out there together, but I knew the pups would be happier in their crates. I tucked them up in their beds, giving them both half a dental chew by way of an apology. Back on the patio it was finally getting dark enough for me to set up the projector, while Susan nipped back into the house to prepare the first round of hotdogs. I’d just started the film and taken the first bite of my hotdog when I heard a somewhat distant howl. Thinking it might be some random other dog in the neighborhood, I ignored it for a moment, but then it was repeated, and I now recognized it as one of Biggles’ urgent “I need a pee!” proclamations. Falling back on years of training with my furry mentors, I speed-swallowed the remainder of my hotdog and went to attend to the new emergency.

As soon as I opened the crates, both Biggles and Beanie bolted through into the kitchen and out into the back garden. “Wow – they’re really desperate!” I thought, and so they were, but not to relieve full bladders; this was all about the hotdogs. Susan only just managed to lift our plates out of reach before the Beagle dish-clearing service got started.

“OK, you can stay out for a bit.” I said, and went back to my seat. We put the plates back on the table and went through the standard three levels of access denial (that would be “No!”, “Seriously, leave it, both of you!” and “Oi! You little buggers!”) before I released that there could be no peace while the plates were out there. I got back off my bum and took the plates into the kitchen. Returning once more to my seat, I was ready to put my feet up and enjoy the film, but Beanie and Biggles had other ideas, because they’d just remembered why they’d gone to their beds in the first place.

“The fire’s scary! We want to go in!!!” they woofed as they took up position outside the kitchen door. I sighed, and got off my arse yet again to go sort them out.

“OK, are you absolutely sure that neither of you wants a pee, because I’ll be annoyed if I put you to bed and then you want to get out again.” They assured me that they were both ready for their crates, but that another round of dental chews was necessary. I obliged, got them safely into their crates, and returned to my seat.

“Fancy some toasted marshmallows?” asked Susan. I really did. I’m in my fifties and I can honestly say that until that night, I’d never tasted a toasted marshmallow.  I was on my second one when there was another round of distant, muffled howling. The little buggers wanted to come out again.

“It’ll just be about the marshmallows, ignore them and they’ll settle down.” said Susan.

I tried to do just that, but the the howling repeated and intensified. “It sounds like Biggles really does need a pee. There’s been a lot of excitement and he always needs a pee when gets excited. I don’t think it’s about the marshmallows” I replied.

As it turned out, it was about the marshmallows. We went through the whole sequence again, and ten minutes later Beanie and Biggles were back in their crates and I was – finally – about to sit back on one of the new garden chairs I’d made and watch what remained of the film.

“Is that rain?” Susan asked.

Of course it was. It had to be. For three days the Met Office had confidently predicted that the chance of precipitation on this particular evening would be less than 10%, which is as good as it gets during summer in western Scotland. And as is often the case, the Met Office had got it wrong. I felt a raindrop on my head, then another, then another. Time to abort the whole thing and get the projector, the screen, the computer speakers and the extension cable all safely back inside before the rain got up to speed. Once I’d done that my thoughts turned to resuming the movie inside the house, but first there was something urgently requesting my attention – an all too familiar howling coming from the bedroom.

“We want to go out! We really do need a pee this time!”

Little buggers. I love ’em to bits. But they’re still little buggers.

There are some things that Biggles is very good at. For example, he can recognize the the sound the doors make in our house when they are opened and closed. This tells him when one of us has been too preoccupied to close the kitchen door properly. His tactical brain tells him not to take immediate advantage of the resulting opportunity for exploration and acquisition; it’s better to let the humie get further away from the door before making a move. When he eventually sets out on his raiding mission, his powerful back legs and well-honed boinging technique allow him to reach anything on the counter-tops. Only items in the higher cupboards are truly out of his reach. It’s such a shame then that with all these talents at his disposal, he’s so absolutely crap at reliably targeting the high value items.

Earlier this week we returned from a shopping expedition with bags full of goodies for a special day. I dumped some of the shopping bags on the kitchen worktops and opted to delay the unpacking until after a cuppa, during the making of which the kitchen door was left ajar. We were sat on our bums and several slurps into said cuppas when the unmistakable sound of Biggles launching himself at the worktops sent Susan running to the kitchen. She was too late to prevent the theft, and as Biggles scurried down his corridor of doom it was not immediately obvious what his lordship had nicked. I joined her and we quickly searched the shopping bags for the most obvious targets.

Marshmallows? Still present. Finger rolls for hotdogs? Also untouched, as were the hotdogs themselves, the eggs (valued for the mess broken eggs create rather than the joy of eating them), and various other high value items. What exactly had Biggles nabbbed? His emergency trot to the corridor made it clear that he had indeed come away with something. Looking round I spotted a little bag of cherry tomatoes on the floor, ripped open, with a few its former inmates strewn around. I went to pick them up but was beaten to it by Beanie, who had cast off her favorite blankie to go see what all the commotion was about. She grabbed one of the tomatoes, burst it, decided it wasn’t even worth the effort of consumption and dropped it in disgust.

Subsequent examination of the carpet in the corridor revealed that my boy had gone through with eating at least one tomato, but in gameshow terms he’d come away with the losers T-shirt, the commemorative mug, or thinking back to UK TV’s 3-2-1, he’d got the booby prize known as “Dusty Bin”. Oddly enough he seemed happy enough with this outcome, but then again as Susan said, Beagles always like bins, whether they’re “Dusty” or not.

Thanks to Biggles’ poor decision making we still have treats for our special day, and despite some heckling from the furry naysayers, we’ll be able to enjoy those treats on the results of my second lockdown joinery project. More about that in the next post!

I’ve always taken pride in brushing the pups’ teeth regularly; in past years I’ve even been complimented by the vet for keeping up with their dental hygiene. Well, you know what they say about pride, although sadly the fall which followed my pride happened to Beanie rather than me. I can’t remember the exact circumstances of the fall (it could have been a slip as she dived off one of the office chairs, or a misstep as she sprinted up the stairs to the deck) but I do remember checking to see if she was alright. It appeared she was – she seemed to brush it off immediately – but in reality it must have knocked out two of her lower front teeth, and though this happened much earlier in the year, I only found out about the missing teeth last week. Worse still, I probably wouldn’t know about them even now if Susan hadn’t spotted the tooth-free gap while rescuing a stolen vegetable plant.

I’ve since discovered that in addition to the tooth loss, the rest of her front teeth aren’t looking as clean as they should. Admittedly there tends to be quite a lot of wriggling during the tooth-brushing process so much of it has to be done by feel rather than by sight, but it’s obvious I need to put more effort into cleaning and periodically eyeballing the front teeth as well as the canines and molars. To mark the start of my new, more conscientious doggy dental care routine I’ve switched to a better toothpaste, got a fresh brush and bought a couple of pots of Plaque-off.

While all of this will help both Beanie and Biggles hold on to their gnashers going forward, I get the feeling Beanie would have preferred something tastier and more immediately rewarding as compensation for her  mishap. She swallowed all her baby teeth as a little pup instead of leaving them under her pillow, so she’s certainly overdue for a visit from the tooth fairy.

Biggles’s life has had its ups and downs recently also. He’s always shown a liking for camping chairs, so recently Susan parked one right by my desk and lined it with our furriest tartan blankie. He needed no invitation to get onto it, and over the next few days it became his favorite hangout.

To be honest I loved having it there too. Biggles just looked so right in it, like it was his own tailor-made Beagle hammock. Unfortunately that chair also put its furry occupant in an ideal position for nicking things from my desk. For some days Biggles either didn’t realize it had this extra feature, or at least didn’t take advantage of it, but then one afternoon, when I was battling a really frustrating bug in my Android app, he went through one of his “I’ve got to get stuff!” phases. He became obsessed with some important papers on the corner of my desk, and made several attempts to nab them. Each time I told him firmly “No!” but when he’s in one his moods, the word “No” comes through as “keep trying different approaches”.

He never got the papers but every snatch attempt inflicted collateral damage, whether it was my phone crashing to the floor, or various usb devices getting ripped from their sockets, or just my concentration getting nuked yet again. Eventually I gave him an ultimatum: “Right! One more naughty nicking attempt and I’m going to confiscate your chair!”

Of course that one more attempt did happen, so I carried through on my threat, folding up his chair and carrying it to another room. Even as I was taking the chair away, an alarm bell sounded in my head. Had I remembered to push my own chair in under the desk before I picked up his Lordship’s luxury hammock? I got my answer even before I made it back to my desk, because Biggles passed me carrying my favorite hot chocolate mug in his mouth as he trotted purposefully to his place for checking out new acquisitions. Only recently I’d re-watched The Untouchables and one of Sean Connery’s best lines immediately popped into my head:

“You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. He takes your favorite camping chair, you take his favorite hot chocolate mug!”

Once he’d finished purging the chocolate dregs from my mug, Biggles went into a big sulk over the continued absence of his chair. I fixed my coding bug and lasted nearly 24 hours before I caved and restored his special seating arrangements. To date there haven’t been any more nicking attempts; I get to keep my papers and my mug on my desk, and he gets to keep his big furry bum on his tartan-lined hammock. I think we’ve reached an understanding.

Now if only I could flush the guilt I still feel over being unaware of Beanie’s tooth mishap…