In Monty Python’s Life of Brian a character called Reg (John Cleese) asks: “Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

Well now there’s evidence to suggest that they did something else of note: they created the conditions necessary  for the development of the Beagle in Britain. Next time your socks get modified with nibble holes and that cup of hot chocolate you put down a few minutes ago isn’t just empty, but suspiciously clean, don’t blame your Beagles – blame the blummin’ Romans!

Now I’m not suggesting that it was the Romans themselves who selectively bred the naughtiest dogs they could find until they eventually produced Beagles. That’s absolutely not the case! However it would appear that they brought rabbits to Britain, and in doing so they set us on a path that ultimately resulted in the creation of the rabbit’s nemesis: the Beagle.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/18/ben-fur-romans-brought-rabbits-to-britain-experts-discover

On paper Beagles certainly should be good rabbit/hare hunters; they have world-class sniffing gear and they’re remarkably agile, persistent and resourceful. I have to admit that Beanie possesses these traits in abundance…

Unfortunately I have my doubts about Biggles; he does well enough with the kind of rabbit that’s stuffing-free and has a big squeaker in its head, but when he’s in the presence of the other kind – the kind that can move all by itself – he just keeps his head down and avoids eye contact.

Could it be that he’s afraid of the real thing? Perhaps another quote from Life of Brian applies here..

Biggles: He’s not the messiah of rabbit hunting, he’s just a very naughty boy!

His Biggleship has had a bit of a rough time lately. It started with the return of his acid reflux problem that he first experienced a couple of years ago. When this takes hold in dogs it often produces sudden regurgitation of acidic bile. Biggles’ reflux is generally pretty mild and if I spot the more subtle symptoms early then a few little doses of cider vinegar in his meals banishes the problem before the regurgitation happens, often for months. This time however I was slow to recognize the early symptoms and he had a big watery vomit, some of which he apparently took into his lungs. The next day his breathing was shallow and fast – even when sleeping – and it was obvious that something wasn’t right. We took him to the vet and came home with a week’s worth of antibiotics to guard against the possibility of aspiration pneumonia. Happily the treatment turned him around, and by the fifth day his breathing rhythm at rest was once again deep, slow and hypnotic. It’s long been the case if that if one of us cuddles up with him in front of the TV, his restful breathing noises quickly put us to sleep; thus far I’ve made two attempts at watching the latest Star Trek “Discovery” episode with Biggles, and in both cases everything between the start and end titles was lost to the Land of Nod. Admittedly Star Trek Discovery isn’t the most riveting of programs at the best of times, but I still think that Biggles’ snoozy sighs are to blame for my TV blackouts.

Just as he recovered the full use of lungs, Biggles managed to cut the pad on one of his front paws. It seems to be typical of my boy that he’ll make a big fuss over something trivial like a twig fragment caught between his toes, but when there’s a genuine injury – like an actual cut pad – he plays the stoic hound. In this case there was no raised paw, no worried licking or three-legged injured soldier routine, just a slight reluctance to go on walks and  – if I looked really closely – a very slight limp. I only spotted the cut when when he was curled up next to me on the sofa! Fortunately we always have a tub of Musher’s Secret in our doggy medicaments box, so the situation is in hand.

I felt that my little boy probably needed a little perking up after these two incidents, and when browsing the shelves of our local pet shop I found something new: filled hooves!

Yes, they look gross…

…but boy do they taste great!

Beanie and Biggles are well-used to getting filled bones, but this was their first time with filled hooves. The stuff in the hooves seemed to be tasty enough, but both of our pups were even more interested in the hooves themselves. Even now, long after every last molecule of filling has been licked away, both our furry types are content to hunker down and have a long, absorbing chew session with them.

Disgusting though they are to look at, I have to say that penny for penny these hooves provide way more chew time than any filled bone, cow ear or toy they’ve tried in the past – except for maybe the legs of the kitchen table. Respect the hoof!

After trying and failing to get a professional to fix the section of fence of that was downed by storm “Gareth”, I ended up going DIY on it with the invaluable help of a very knowledgeable ex-engineer neighbor. Unfortunately it was not a quick job; in order to minimize costs and re-use the existing fence panels there was a lot of nail removal, sawing, digging and concreting involved, followed by the insertion of around 500 screws. In all it took a week: a week that left me exhausted, not just because of all the manual labor but also due to the relentless struggle to keep Beanie & Biggles contained on our property and out of the neighboring garden.

While working on the fence our two Beaglets periodically needed access to their outside loo, and this frequently brought me to a standstill as I had to keep them out of concrete-filled wheel barrows, away from rusty but still sharp nails, and retrieve one or both of them from their new supplementary garden.

Every day when work ended I grabbed some metal poles and a roll of green plastic mesh and did my utmost to erect a barrier across the big gap in the fence. While it was daylight and I was out there with them it seemed that my make-shift construction was going to work. I watched Beanie and Biggles probe and test my efforts, and retired to the house confident that I’d done enough to keep the two of them in our garden during short nighttime loo visits. I should have known better.

Not good Dad! I can’t get into our other garden!!

As soon as it got dark Beanie mysteriously gained the ability to teleport directly through the green mesh stuff whenever she wanted. I’d let her out of the kitchen door and watch her as she meandered down a safe distance from the fence, but if I turned away for a second I’d see nothing but empty garden when I looked back. Occasionally she’d re-appear by the time I’d donned my jacket and shoes and found my torch, but mostly I had to go on a Beanie retrieval mission into the neighbor’s garden; sometimes it would be 5-10 minutes before I’d return with a wriggling Beagle maggot in my arms. I found it particularly galling that while the mesh clearly didn’t inhibit The Beanster, it did stop me, forcing me to use the gate. Every. Single. Time.

Initially Biggles seemed to be defeated by the mesh, which was surprising because he’s certainly got enough raw grunt to just force himself through it, leaving a Bigglet sized hole. This apparent success made me over confident, and at one point I let him out and went back into the lounge to drink a coffee, not bothering to watch him at all. I finished the coffee in due course, and then remembered that I was one Beagle short. Opening the kitchen door I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him; I found him stuck on the other side of the green barrier, anxiously repeating the “knock-knock” woof he normally uses when coming back in from the garden. Fatigued by several prior Beanie retrievals I just marched straight over to the green stuff and extracted a couple of poles to make an opening, but before I could say anything to him he marched straight past me making a beeline for the kitchen door. He didn’t exactly break into a run, but he was trotting with the conspicuous urgency of someone who’d had a scare and was trying to hide it. While Beanie’s inbuilt teleporter was a two-way device, Biggles’ was apparently unidirectional and he’d only just found out. That’s what happens when you trade your hard-earned socks for the cheapest teleportation device on eBay without bothering to look at the feedback scores.

Over the next few days I put more and more effort into making my green barrier Beagle-proof. I grabbed extra sticks and poles and rammed them into the ground to tie it down, I laid heavy tools on top of the lower edge of the mesh, and I doubled it up to create a multi-layered construction, yet each evening Beanie continued to pass through the thing at will, leaving no obvious signs of how she’d done it. Biggles took a couple of nights to get over his trauma, but then he starting turning up in the neighbor’s garden too. I never did find out how they were doing it, but I was thoroughly relieved when the proper wooden fence was finally back up and full Beagle containment was restored. I got some pretty dirty looks from Beanie though; she wasn’t at all happy about losing her extended garden.