At least once a week at our local gym a stressed voice interrupts the piped music to announce “Code red at the pool!”. This phrase indicates a life-threatening emergency, and given the number of such announcements you’d be tempted to conclude that the swimming pool is a very dangerous place indeed and best avoided; a bit like London, or Paisley on a Saturday night, but more consistently wet. Fortunately most of these “emergencies” turn out to be false alarms, but earlier this week we had a Code Red of our own, and I can tell there was nothing false about it.

Like most Beagle boys, Biggles has only a limited vocabulary, but subtle variations in delivery allow him to impart many different meanings to a even single”Woof!”. The volume, intonation and duration of the woof that woke Susan and myself early one morning conveyed a sense of urgency that needed no translation. It was a Code Red woof for sure. If we’d been in an episode of Star Trek Next Generation instead of in our bedroom, then Biggles would have been playing the role of Geordi La Forge, warning Captain Picard that a warp core breach was imminent.

Just like the staff at the gym we sprang into action; while Susan went to free Biggles from his crate, I stumbled over a minefield of randomly discarded socks, squeaky stuffing-free foxes and other toys  to deactivate the alarm and open all the barriers that stood between Biggles and the outside loo. As my boy followed me into the kitchen he still managed a brief sniff at the foil container from the previous night’s lasagne ( a true Beagle!), then ran straight out into the garden to deal with his urgent business. When he returned a few minutes later he was visibly relieved, and thanks to the urgency in that code red announcement the bed in his crate was still dry and free of any unwanted bottom sausages.  Now that he’d been let out of his crate he didn’t want to get back in and made his case for bringing forward the daily Big Bed snuggle time with us humies. It’s always dangerous to give into such requests because it sets a precedent, but of course we did, and when you let one Beagle do it, you kind of have to let the other one do it too. Our sleep was further disrupted that morning by loud snoring from under the covers and spiky paws trying to claim more space than should be required by a little furry person.

Speaking of snuggle time and little furry people, we’ve now moved our cheap eBay Reebok Step knock-off to the side of the bed typically used by The Beanster. Since we put a thick memory foam topper on our mattress our little girl has occasionally been having difficulty jumping onto the bed when she’s just got out of her crate. If we leave the bedroom door open at any point later in the day, Beanie can and will jump into the bed effortlessly, but some mornings now she can be a bit hesitant, and the Step should help. It’s the first concrete sign that at 12 Beanie is not quite the spring chicken she once was, but I’m continuing with all the exercises recommended by the doggie physio to keep her and Biggles in the best possible shape for as long as possible – including wading sessions in the sea (even though they’re not necessarily everyone’s idea of fun at this time of year!)

Most Beagle owners (and vets) live by the rule that when a hound loses interest in food there’s something wrong physically, probably something serious. Our experience with Beanie and Biggles largely contradicts that, as most appetite loss that we’ve seen has been the result of some very screwed up Beagle thinkage. Nevertheless when Biggles failed to announce breakfast time to the whole world and didn’t dive head first into his bowl one morning, my thoughts inevitably turned to possible physical causes. Top of the list was of course the dreaded blockage; both of our pups have ample opportunity to eat something they shouldn’t when offlead, and even on-lead they’re past masters at grabbing things and speed-swallowing it before we can intervene. Eat the wrong thing and an unlucky Beagle can be on a one-way trip to Blockageville.

I’ve lost count of the number of times a vet has asked me “has Beanie/Biggles pooed recently, and was it normal?” and in Beanie’s case I often have to think hard before I can answer with any confidence. Such is not the case with his Biggleship, because he goes to great lengths to make each of his poos as memorable as possible. When on lead he strongly prefers to dump in the middle of the road when a car is coming, or on the clean paved drive of someone’s house, or  to squeeze a bottom sausage or two through the gaps in someone’s fence; if he can do this while he’s got an audience, so much the better. So, when I asked myself about the circumstances of his most recent deposit, the answer came easily: that very morning he’d reversed his bum up to a tree stump in full view of our local community center’s security cameras and dropped three firm foul-smelling logs right on top of it.

This made me less worried about a blockage, but still, why wasn’t he face deep in his bowl the instant I lowered it to the floor? I’m in the habit of talking to my pups all the time so without thinking I asked him directly “Don’t you want this Biggles? What’s wrong little boy?”. He wagged a little, looked at his bowl, looked at me, then backed away kind of nervously. I picked his bowl back up and held it under his mouth, but again he backed away, so then I grabbed a few pieces of kibble with my other hand and offered them to him. He thought about it for a second, then took them, and shortly after that I had him eating from his bowl, but only while I held it up for him. I watched him for the rest of the morning, and though he’d appeared fine earlier on his walk,post-breakfast he now seemed to be a shadow of his normal self. Instead of getting himself a prime snoozing spot on the sofa facing the window, he quietly settled down in the bed by my desk. There was no ten minute high-intensity bed making session and no attempt to nick things off my desk; he just curled up in a little ball and sighed softly. Susan often jokes that our boy changes size according to his mood, and right at that moment he was definitely “Littles” and not Biggles at all. I was strongly reminded of the second Austin Powers movie as I watched him; this was a boy who had lost his mojo.

I had hopes that after the tea-time walk his appetite would be fully restored, but again the only way I could get him to eat was to hold his bowl for him and get him started with a few hand-fed pieces of kibble. After watching this, Susan thought that maybe he’d strained his neck somehow and needed the bowl to be off the ground before he could eat from it. We tested this theory by tossing a munchy stick – one of his favorite regular treats – onto the floor, and in a flash he was on it, and it was down the hatch. There was no hint of any physical impediment, apparently his appetite for treats was intact, and he was still eating, drinking and pooing, so whatever was behind this, it didn’t seem worthy of a costly vet journey just yet.

Things were no better the following morning, but as I delivered the bowls to the normal feeding spots in the hall, Susan caught Biggles looking anxiously across to Beanie. He looked at Beanie, he looked at his bowl, he looked at Beanie again, and Susan was sure she could see a mental conflict going on between his big floppy ears. If he’d started woofing slow and low with smoke coming out of his ears, it would have been a perfect match for one of those Star Trek episodes where Kirk traps a computer in logical paradox.

“I think Beanie’s been doing ju-ju on Biggles. She’s got him thinking he can’t have his food” Susan said, and when she followed it with “Take it! Go on, take it! TAKE IT! TAKE IT!” addressed directly to Biggles, that’s exactly what he did. He stuck his head in his bowl and though he’d started several mouthfuls behind Beanie, he still finished ahead of her. So it was true; Beanie had used her mystical powers to convince him that he wasn’t allowed to have his two main meals each day, and it had taken a repeated, unequivocal command from a trusted humie to break the spell. Now that it was broken, Biggles immediately regained his mojo; he was back to being the official Town Crier at mealtimes and setting new speed-swallowing records, and that evening the toy box was raided many times, with much squeaking heard from the end of the corridor by our bedroom.

There’s no doubt that Biggles worships Beanie, and I’m equally certain she loves him, but every now then she does like to make his life hell. If you’re thinking that maybe there’s a parallel for this in human male-female relationships, well just keep that thought to yourself; after all, you don’t want to get into trouble and be told that you can’t have your dinner ;)

A long time ago – way before we had Beagles in our lives – Susan had a cat, and one day that cat left a little present in the pocket of my favorite jacket. When I got home from work I put that jacket on and went to one of our local video/DVD rental shops (yes, it was that long ago). While browsing the action and adventure section I dug around in my pockets looking for a tissue to blow my nose, and instead my fingers latched onto something else. It was cold, firm yet slightly moist, almost clay-like, and roughly cylindrical, a little over an inch long.

“What on earth could that be?” I thought, and pulled it out of my pocket for a look.  The very last thing I expected to see in my hand was a cat poo, but there it was. I’m ashamed to say I left it right there in the shop, wrapped up in a paper hanky by a row of Chuck Norris films. The feel of that little cat jobby between my fingers is etched in memory, and I would instantly recognize it if anything like that were ever to happen again.

Just over a week ago something like that did happen again. It was early in the morning, intensely cold, some little while after I’d let Beanie and Biggles out of their crates and into our beds for a snuggle. The call of nature forced me out of bed, so I staggered to the toilet in the near-dark, then staggered back to bed, slowly feeling my way back under the covers so as to avoid putting any weight on stray tails, paws or ears. My fingers closed around something that shouldn’t have been there, and suddenly I felt like I was right back in that video shop. I put the light on to confirm my suspicions and yep, there it was, a poo. In the bed. Our bed. A poo. Fortunately it was small, solid and dry so there was no obvious contamination of the sheets. I was so tired I just wanted to get back to sleep, so I wrapped the little deposit in toilet paper, flushed it, my washed my hands and went back to bed, briefly noting to Susan that we really should change the bed before the next night.

During the day I kept puzzling over the origin of that poo. Susan and Beanie were in the clear because they’d been on the other side of the bed. That left Biggles as the obvious suspect, and I figured it was probable that the poo had been a “klingon” or “brown dangle-berry” that had detached itself once he got into bed. There was however another, more worrying explanation; inspired by pro-vegetarian film “The Game Changers” we’d had a run of vegetable-heavy, meat-free meals and I’d been farting like a trooper for days. Was it possible that I’d released some gas build up during the night and there’d been a little bit of follow through? I couldn’t completely discount it.

The poodunnit mystery went unsolved until a few days later when the same thing happened again, but this time I caught The Bigglet trying to bury this second deposit in the bed by repeatedly pushing the sheets with his nose. I challenged him verbally with “Biggles, did you do that?” and he looked at me with his “it’s a fair cop, Dad” expression. Case closed, and in fairness the two poo incidents had happened after nights when fireworks had been going off, so there were extenuating circumstances.

Speaking of fireworks, Beanie generally coped with them better than last year, but on the night of November 5th we did end up making her a “bunker” in the bath tub. Yep, for some reason Beanie felt safer with four white fiberglass walls around her. Maybe she’d remembered the bomb-in-the-bathroom scene in one of the Lethal Weapon movies; if a bathtub was strong enough to save Mel Gibson and Danny Glover from the big booms, surely it could save a little Beagle girl too? Regardless, we ended up moving one of the office dog beds into the tub and lifting our shaking, Thundershirt-clad Beanster onto it. Every few minutes one of us would pop into the bathroom to check on her; about an hour after the fireworks seemed to have stopped I got a brief tail flick when asked her if she was OK. A further hour after that I got a full wag, and shortly thereafter Beanie felt able to leave her safe place. Happily she got through most of the other nights with only an odd glance at the ceiling. There did seem to be fewer fireworks overall this year; maybe after recent political events fewer people felt like celebrating an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of parliament :)

I’ll finish this post with a few shots from a fine local walk around Stewarton. It went through a very nice stretch of woodland that still had some Autumn color. We’ve been living in Ayrshire for a decade now and this walk is only a short drive away, yet I didn’t even know it existed until by chance it popped up in a Google search. I guess that’s often the way with things that are virtually on your doorstep.