Sometimes it feels a bit like I’m running an old folks’ care home. At night:
“Come on Beanie & Biggles it’s time for bed!
No Biggles that’s not your crate – yours is over there, remember?
No that’s still not your crate Biggles, Monkey’s in that one, see? You wouldn’t fit in and it wouldn’t go well at all!
Beanie, you need to get all your bits in the crate or I can’t shut the door! No Beanie, get your tail in! No, your leg’s got to be in too!”

And then in the morning:
“Hold on Biggles I’m trying to get you out into the garden – don’t do your poop yet! No Biggles, not on the deck, go down the steps first. Oh, OK, well I’ll clean that up in a minute.”

Yep, in many ways our golden oldies are harder work than the youngsters. Biggles – who has always been a bit of a vocal boy – is going deaf and senile, so he’s not only woofing more, but more loudly and at a higher pitch. Additionally he’s been having a bit of trouble controlling his poop-shoot. The vet suggested adding more roughage to his diet, cautioning us that it might make matters worse;  a risky venture for sure but it’s working, and it’s also very popular with the other pack members.

Thanks to the extra veg, warnings of an imminent Biggles delivery now come early enough to avert accidents in the house. The deck remains a poop zone, but Poppy’s rather partial to Biggle-droppings and often cleans them up before I can get a bagged hand to them. Note to self: avoid early morning kisses from Poppy.

Sock therapy has proved somewhat helpful in managing Biggles’ other issues. What is sock therapy? Well it’s a short, concentrated game of find-the-sock with biccie payments for each success.

It took a while, but now he’s remembering previous sock locations and searching them systematically. His woofs still come out at a volume that would drown out a live concert by The Who, but he’s having fewer moments of confusion.

He does seem to have trouble grasping the idea that the sock game is only played at a certain time of the day and with a specific set of socks, but that’s just normal Biggles.

Beanie’s had trouble coping with the recent heatwave, probably because of the changes in her fur; over the last year or so it’s become extremely soft and fluffy. It feels wonderful to the touch, but I suspect it’s keeping her far too warm and she doesn’t seem keen to shed it. Biggles’ fur has also gotten much softer of late, but just prior to the heatwave he went through a very thorough shedding process. It blocked the vacuum cleaner several times, but at least he’s now wearing the Beagle eqivalent of shorts and a T-shirt instead of fleece-lined trousers and a Parka jacket. We switcheed the main walk to an earlier slot in the morning to get it done before the heat builds, but still Beanie’s needed to wear her cooling jacket most days.

By contrast it’s been a quiet and relatively uneventful few weeks for the youngsters. Squeaky elelphants hve had a hard time however.

A few more recent shots:

A resourceful Beagle can find a chinrest anywhere

The buttercups are all out in our garden

At times even the youngsters have found it too hot…

The sprinkler helps a bit..

And smarter Beagles know to seek the shade

So that when hottest part of the day has passed, normal activities can quickly resume

When Poppy first came to live with us she wanted to be friends with everyone and everything, even cats. She actually had a cheek to cheek cuddle with the first cat she met when she was allowed out for walks. The only things she couldn’t bring herself to trust were puddles outside; puddles on the floor in the house were OK, understandably so given that most of those were made by Poppy herself.

Sadly recent events have taught Poppy not to be so trusting. Bees are now right up there with puddles, and I’m pretty sure I’ve earned a place on her blacklist too.

One morning as Poppy was completing her morning rounds of the garden and I was waiting at the kitchen door to let her in, I saw her look sharply to one side, then recoil in fear, darting into a corner of the patio. Shortly thereafter she seemed to be choking, and losing control of her legs. We ran out and I picked her up, and as I held her I became genuinely afraid that she was about to asphyxiate right there in my arms. Out of desperation and without proper thought, I did the same thing I’d done to help Beanie in the past when she had choking incident with a rawhide chew: I stuck my fingers down Poppy’s throat to feel for any obstruction and hopefully pull it out. I should point out that this is is not all the recommended course of action when a dog starts choking; there’s a doggy version of the Heimlich manoeuver which is a much better and safer option. Regardless, my intervention did ease her breathing but her legs were still giving way when she tried to stand. This improved over the next minute or so, and then for a brief period she became quite aggressive, growling and howling at me and warning me off. In the time it took Susan to call the vet and get an emergency appointment, Poppy seemed to have returned to normal, but of course we took her for a checkup anyway.

“Bee sting.” That was the vet’s immediate response when we relayed what we’d observed, and it seemed to explain most things: the sharp look to one side, the fearful reaction and the shock. It might even go some way to explaining the growling and wild arrooing, though there could also be another factor at play for that one. I mean, imagine you’d come really close to being run over by a bus. Still trembling from the adrenaline rush and shock of the near miss, you tell your story to a bystander and they respond by saying “Blimey, I’d better stick my fingers down your throat then”.

Regardless, this brush with death has caused Poppy to think seriously about having puppies to continue her line. Procreation is turning out to be quite tricky though. She’s been humping the heck out of Monkey..

..and she’s even tried planting herself like a seed in a pot full of compost, but as yet no pups have materialised. Is it possible she’s doing something wrong?

It’s all terribly confusing and exhausting.

Loudoun Hill isn’t exactly a mountain but it’s a big enough climb for a couple of elderly Beaglets, and it’s certainly the biggest hill I could handle while holding four leads.

As is often the case, getting hounds up a hill is the easy part; they’re all eager to climb and see what’s at the top, although time should always be allowed for mid-ascent sniffage and sheep poo sampling.

If there are going to be problems then they’ll mostly occur on the way back down, and in this case I discovered just how much pulling power four Beagles cam exert, even when two of them are golden oldies and often get confused. Despite that I managed to stay on my feet and off my arse for the entire walk.

By the time we got home we had four very contented and sleepy little furries.