It was His Biggleship’s 11th birthday on Wednesday. I gave him an extra hug and bottom pat when he and Beanie joined us in bed in the morning, and then we headed off the to beach for a (mostly) offlead run. In recent years I’ve been able give them more and more freedom during these sessions; I guess this is partly because they’ve calmed / slowed down a bit, but also because the bond between us has grown stronger. In the past if they had slightly stressful meeting with other dogs (maybe professional dog walkers out with a pack of 12 or more) they’d often go AWOL to burn off the adrenaline, but now they just come sprinting to me. It’s a much safer reaction and one that the so-called “natural dog training” approach seeks to create. I must admit that I’ve never put any concerted effort into the natural dog training drills we’ve seen online, but I guess the roughhousing we tend to do during play sessions has had a similar effect.

Happily the only vaguely stressful moment on this particular outing happened when the two of them found yet another container of milk and I had to confiscate it. Just like last time the milk within it was well on its way to becoming cheese, but unlike last time it was Beanie who got to it first. She popped off the cap with ease and quickly set about consuming the contents directly from the open neck, leaving the birthday boy to lick up the over-spill as best he could. I got it off them fairly quickly but I did feel a bit mean when I saw the disappointment on Biggles’ face. As it turned out he was lucky not to have had much of it; this milk came with unwanted side-effects which I’ll get to later.

The Beagle Book of Law states that when houndlets get home after a beach run it is instantly breakfast time, and breakfast must be served without delay or a severe protest woofing will ensue. Apparently I was a bit tardy because there was certainly plenty of woofing, but by way of compensation I dropped the last pieces of Biggles’ favorite munchy sticks in their bowls along with the kibble. Even before the bowls hit the floor Beanie and Biggles grabbed the sticks and ran off down the corridor, temporarily uninterested in their regular food. I put the bowls down and stood guard over them to make sure that whoever finished their stick first wouldn’t end up with two breakfast servings instead of one. It’s funny how treats last mere seconds when I’m hoping to keep the Beaglets safely occupied for a while, but take forever to consume when I’m desperate to get out of my rain / sweat-soaked running clothes and hit the shower.

Once I’d got cleaned up we moved onto the pressies. Beanie and Biggles already have a mountain of toys but only some of them are in fully serviceable condition, and when you see a squeaky teddy going for cheap in Aldi, well, what are you supposed to do? And if you get a teddy for the boy, you have to get a strange monkey thing with long elasticated, flapping arms and legs for the girl. Them’s the rules.

Give Beanie anything that’s floppy and fits in her mouth and she’ll shake it and play tug, but Biggles often takes a lot longer to get properly acquainted with a new toy; in fact he’s only just started running round the house with a squeaky snowman he got a couple of Christmases ago. For now it’s enough that his new teddy makes a comfortable chin rest.

A pack of cheese-flavored doggy crisps was a much bigger hit with both of them. I expected each crisp to be gone in one or at most two quick chomps, but I was wrong; these are things to be held between paws and nibbled over several minutes. Very satisfying for consumers and spectators alike!

It was sometime after this happy nibbling that the earlier milk incident came back to haunt us. We can usually count on an extended period of contented snoring and dream-woofing after a beach run and breakfast, but this time things were cut short when Beanie made an urgent request for the outside loo. I had some product photography to get done so I didn’t particularly welcome the interruption, but I let her out, stood waiting by the kitchen door until she’d finished and let her back in. I had only just returned to my work when Beanie made it clear that she had to go out again. And again. And again. We now refer to the evening of Biggles’ birthday as “The Night of Many Poos.” I’m not sure whether she was helped by the servings of Greek yoghurt we gave her or whether she simply pooped herself out, but by bedtime things were back to normal. As for the Birthday Boy himself, well he may missed out on the liquid cheese in the morning but at least he didn’t end up with a sore bum from over-pooing.

Happy Birthday Mr. Biggles! Eleven years old but still just a big floppy puppy inside!

Last week went spectacularly well for The Bigglet! It started with him finding an almost full container of milk while offlead on the beach, and this milk wasn’t like the boring fresh stuff that we get from supermarket; it smelled gross as all milk should and had lots of chunky bits floating in it. Truly quality stuff!  The only fly in the ointment was that Beanie – who is normally responsible for working out how to open such things – wasn’t available, because she was sticking to me like glue and trying to get more than her fair share of my chicken supplies. Unlike his resourceful sister Biggles only knows two ways of getting access to things: he can scratch at them with his front paws, and he can nibble at them with his teeth. Fortunately he’s practiced these two primitive skills to such an extent that they’ve become extraordinarily effective, and so it was that very soon the container of milk had a neat hole in it big enough to accommodate the lapping action of a small-to-medium sized hound. By the time Beanie and I had jogged back to find out what he was doing, he’d had a big bloated belly full of the good stuff. Even better, when I put him back on lead and dragged him away from the milk he still got a lump of chicken to top things off.  You might be thinking “wow, life doesn’t get much better than that” but later in the week it did.

It’s his lordship’s birthday at the end of the month so one evening I took the dynamic due to our local Pets At Home store for a bit of browsing. I can always tell when other owners are about to take their woofers into that shop; the lead strains, the owner’s arm extends and the pace quickens as the dog pulls like a steam train towards the entrance. They’re going in, and nothing had better stand in their way. No doubt other dog owners were sitting in their cars chuckling as they saw me being dragged by Beanie and Biggles (mostly Biggles) and thought “Yep, I know where they’re going!” As it turned out I didn’t see any toys that were worth adding to their already extensive collection, but I did grab a couple of Biggles’ favorite cereal and tripe sticks. Actually he grabbed them and I paid for them, and I think I’ll have to get another couple for his birthday because those first two are all already nearly gone.

There was still one more stroke of good fortune to come for The Bigglet. After nearly eleven years of practice his bedmaking skills haven’t improved, and he can still be counted on to turn any moderately tidy and welcoming bed into a convoluted and uncomfortable mess. However, just as monkeys left in a room with a typewriter for long enough might eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare, an inept Beagle boy left alone long enough with two dog beds might eventually produce something worth sleeping on. By pure chance that’s exactly what Biggles did.

Behold the luxurious double-decker bed, randomly crafted by Biggles.

And yeah, it was really, really comfy

While Biggles was on a roll, Beanie seemed a bit off her game this week. Attempted blankie self-wrappings went wrong more than once, but by far the most conspicuous sign of things not going her way was when she had a door mishap. Beanie is normally very good with doors, and can even even open the baby gates if we don’t lock them down properly at the top. One morning however I heard the unmistakable sounds of an attempted door opening going awry, and as I was otherwise engaged on the porcelain throne at the time I was unable to provide the immediate assistance that a spoiled little princess not only deserves, but demands.

An unlocked baby gate is no barrier to the Beanster..

..even if it sometimes takes two paws

.. to gain her freedom

The sequence began with a thud and a short high speed drumroll of flapping ears. “Ah, someone’s just got out of our bed and had a shake” I thought. All this was normal, but then I heard some fumbling at the partially open bedroom door followed by the sound of that door closing and the latch engaging. Oh dear. Whoever that small someone was, they’d just messed up the door opening and locked themselves into the bedroom. I leaned forward on the crapper, straining to hear how this would play out. What followed was a long period of silence as a small doggy brain came to terms with the situation, and then finally there was a single half-hearted swipe of claws on painted wood. It wasn’t a call for help so much as a pathetic admission of defeat. “That’s Biggles for sure”, I thought, but when I finally got my pants back up and went to the door, I found a slightly anxious Beanie on the other side of it.

Never mind Beanie, we all have “off” days

When Beanie wants to come in from the garden, she stands at the kitchen door and woofs; when she wants me to play with her, she grabs a toy and woofs; when there’s a hedgehog in the garden or a wasp crawling about on the floor, she woofs, but when she’s locked herself in a room and quite possibly no-one knows what’s happened, she paws the door once and then stays very, very quiet. Sometimes I just don’t get Beanie logic.

Here in Ayrshire we don’t typically get a lot of thunderstorms, but we’ve had plenty of them this last week. In the past Beanie has had a bit of a problem with loud banging noises, but this is no longer the case; in fact she’s been so confident that she’s been offering comfort to anyone or anything who needs it. During one storm she felt that my lap needed the reassurance of a Beanie bottom. As the storms continued she gave succour to our ensuite toilet. You might think that a stocky chunk of porcelain has nothing to fear from the big sky booms, but Beanie’s keen senses told her otherwise and she camped out by it, refusing to leave until the booms had stopped. She even pretended to be a little scared, just to show solidarity. That’s the thing about Beanie: she’s such a fearless and selfless little girl, always thinking of others.

When each storm ended she would hold a little celebration, and what better way to celebrate than to grab her (formerly) squeaky rabbit and roll around on the floor like a spoiled little pup. Hard to think she’s going to be 12 years old in a few months time!