Moving on from Camas nan Geall, we drove to the base of Ben Hiant – Ardnamurchan’s highest point. On our last visit there we climbed up in the dark to catch sunrise from the top. This time we were heading up at the opposite end of the day, but one thing remained the same: it was very cold and windy at the summit.

We didn’t hang around on the summit for long, preferring instead to walk back down to a lower point that was much warmer and gave us a very pleasant view of of the setting sun.

Beautiful though the sunset was, it didn’t hold Beagle attention for long

Soon after that last shot we continued down the hill to the Beaglemobile, arriving just as the light was failing. My first task on getting the van open and the lights on was of course to prepare two bowls of Chappie for the pups. From this point until the bowls were put down on the floor, Biggles became Ardnamurchan’s honorary Town Crier, proudly announcing teatime to any sheep, deer and humans in a 5 mile radius. We humies had our tea also, but not having my own inbuilt megaphone I was unable to broadcast the event as effectively as my little big-gobbed boy.

By now the Corran ferry service had closed for the day, so we had a choice: spend the night on Ardnamuchan, or just accept the somewhat longer drive back to the campsite. The lure of the showers and our extraordinarily comfortable tent won out pretty easily. What’s more although the drive would be longer, we expected it to be much easier at night; there’d be less traffic, and headlights would provide ample warning of any oncoming vehicles. As it turned out we were mostly right, but a few pesky deer still managed to get the adrenaline flowing.

The next morning I took the pups for a final walk round Glencoe while Susan packed up the tent. Whenever I’m responsible for the first morning walk on a campsite I always try to get Beanie and Biggles through the exit gate before they relieve themselves, but I rarely succeed. Perhaps the urgency in my walk translates into urgency in their lower bodies. Regardless, plot number 13 got doused by Biggle pee, and not for the first time on our little holiday; I guess the number 13 really is unlucky.

After a stroll around the nearby Lochan Trails we returned to the campsite, where we encountered another Beagle. He or she burst into howls of outrage as we passed, but my two trotted on calmly without responding. It’s not often I get to play the owner of well behaved dogs, but when it happens I make the most of it. “I don’t know, some Beagles!” I said, shaking my head as we walked by.

The drive back home passed quickly and soon I was leading Beanie & Biggles through the front door. I unclipped their leads and as usual Beanie immediately embarked on a whirlwind tour of the house to make sure that everything was as she’d left it. While she buzzed around, Biggles drained the water bowl, found the comfiest seat in the lounge and plonked his big white bum on it. Once Beanie’s internal checks had been completed she requested access to the back garden. I let her out and stood watching at the door, expecting her to go on her customary mad sprint of freedom. Unusually, it didn’t happen;  she just calmly patrolled the garden borders then had a relaxing sniff round our tree.

From my point of view our holiday with the campervan and tent had involved more doggy restrictions than previous breaks in the caravan; after all there’d been no off-lead time in the tent at all (unless you count that brief moment when Beanie unclipped her own lead). Perhaps being tethered but able to go in and out of the tent or van at will actually gave our pups a greater feeling of freedom than being off lead in the confines of the caravan?

It’s been a fortnight of highs and lows for our little boy. It all started when his occasional bouts of reverse sneezing became an almost daily occurrence and were sometimes accompanied by a small amount of regurgitation. After some research and careful observation of his Biggleship, Susan figured he was suffering from acid reflux. There are plenty of home remedies for this condition – both for humans and dogs – but we decided to take him to the vet just to make sure there was nothing more serious going on. After all, he’d cost us very little in vet fees compared to his sister (apart from that time with the half kilo of grapes) so he was entitled to a bit of medical TLC.

Bad move.

The vet agreed there was probably nothing to worry about – even commenting on what an otherwise unusually fit little Beagle he was – but still prescribed a rather heavy handed and ridiculously expensive drug that reduces acid production in the stomach. We dutifully gave Biggles his medication and for the first day it seemed to completely eliminate his problem. The second day didn’t go quite so well, but by the third day he was genuinely unwell, vomiting and off his food. Susan felt very strongly that the drug was to blame, but off we went to the vet again.

This time Biggles received a gloved and lubricated finger up his bum, an anti-sickness injection and three day’s supply of bland, tinned dog food. Of those three, the tinned food was definitely the winner. He got his first taste of it once the sickness jag had taken effect, and it was awesome! It was the kind of food that makes you wag uncontrollably, announce your good fortune to the whole world with joyous woofing, and boing up off the ground with such power that you nearly KO your Mum as she’s serving it up. We had instructions to serve the food in regular small amounts, and over the next three days Biggles felt like the luckiest little Beagle boy in the whole world. Any time Susan emerged from the kitchen he immediately stopped whatever he was doing (even if it was something really important like receiving a quality chest massage and tummy tickle) and ran to meet her, because more often than not, it was feeding time.

And then – suddenly and without warning – it was all gone. He was back on regular kibble. To be fair he still wagged uncontrollably, woofed and boinged at mealtimes because, well, that’s what furry boys called Biggles tend to do, but I could tell that inside his little bubble had burst. As his reflux showed signs of returning we introduced a small topping of natural yogurt and cider vinegar on his breakfast. This held off all the reflux symptoms, but something else was needed to distract him from thoughts of what he’d won and lost. Something big. Really big. Like.. a mountain!

The mountain in this case was Ben Dubh. It wasn’t new to us, but what was new was how we tackled it. Instead of doing the whole visit in one day, we drove to Luss in the evening, spent the night in our campervan and did the climb the next day once some of the mist and low-lying cloud had lifted. A few things went a bit wrong on this first proper outing in The BeagleMobile: we had a gas leak that left us without heating and cooking facilities; our fabric travel crates proved impractical and we ended up spending the night all squashed up together on the bed (just like always!); and finally on the drive home the Erskine Bridge was closed, forcing us through Glasgow in rush hour traffic. I’m still having traffic queue nightmares from that last bit, but in two ways the trip was a huge success: firstly and most importantly it distracted Biggles from the loss of his bliss-in-a-tin Royal Canin food; and secondly, I finally got a decent pano of the so-called “Arrochar Alps” from Ben Dubh.

Click to view large

I’m starting to wonder if Beanie & Biggles have some strange new illness that has halted production of the Beagle naughty hormone. We’ve just come through almost the whole Christmas season without any notable bad behavior. I mean obviously our two are still unruly enough that any regular dog owner would hand them over to a rehoming center, but for Beagles they’ve been almost angelic.

Early one morning the pups made their way up Castle Hill above Largs, where they saw the sun rise, snatched biccies from the top of a small but surprisingly challenging cairn, and inexplicably failed to woof at a group of distant cows (even though woofing would have attracted the cows and brought the walk to an abrupt end).

Beanie & Biggles were similarly quiet when they journeyed by ferry over to the island of Cumbrae. We endured so much wind and rain on Cumbrae that we spent the return trip in the ferry’s interior passenger compartment. Ordinarily – rough weather or not – we avoid such small, confined places due to the ever-present risk of hearing damage from his Biggleship’s 120 decibel woofer. Fortunately this time he saw no other dogs, no cyclists, and no-one wearing a hat that isn’t on the list of Beagle-approved head-wear, and so remained silent throughout. In fact he and Beanie were so well-behaved that the other passengers barely noticed them sticking their snouts into every shopping bag sitting unguarded on the floor as we prepared to disembark.

Even when we ventured up The Merrick – one of Dumfries and Galloway’s most popular hills and site of Beanie’s best solo off lead adventure ever – both Beanie & her brother passed up multiple opportunities for major naughtiness. That was one seriously rough walk; we went up the morning before storm “Frank” was due to hit the West of Scotland. The weather forecast had indicated the gales wouldn’t start until some hours after our descent, but just like a kid that couldn’t wait to open his presents, Frankie-boy started early. The trudge back down was a nightmare of high winds, low visibility and slippery mud – exactly the conditions in which a coordinated Beagle pulling frenzy would have dumped me unceremoniously and painfully onto my bum. And yet there was scarcely any pulling. No-one even thought to unhook their lead and go for a three-hour romp with the sheep and deer, although to be fair this would have been somewhat difficult to accomplish due to the half roll of Duck Tape I’d wound round and round the release clips.

Yes it looked calm enough at the start of the walk…

But storm Frank came out to play almost immediately after I took this pano

Christmas day itself was also trouble-free. Admittedly at one point Biggles did steal his sister’s Christmas jumper and roll about with it on the rug making X-rated sexual pleasure noises. And there was that time – about an hour after having the doggy version of our Christmas dinner – that his lordship had a brief but noisy bout of “stress flatulence” while jumping on to the sofa next to me. But neither of those incidents are naughty by any recognized Beagle standards.

His..

.. and her Christmas jumpers, served up with our pups’ most popular and long-lived treat dispensing toys

This morning Beanie & Biggles had their first beach run of 2016, and unusually they had to share the beach with a load of other doggies whose owner’s had likewise decided to welcome in the New Year by braving the cold and wind. A busy beach isn’t the best place to let our crazy Beagles off lead, but everybody else seemed to be having such fun that I couldn’t deprive my two of a chance to do the same.

Amazingly, from the second I released them to the moment I clipped them back onto their extending leads, they behaved themselves brilliantly. They chased around at full speed, never getting more than 100 yards from me and my ever-ready supply of chicken, and responded to all of my commands. For those blissful few minutes of off-lead joy they were just like other dogs, albeit dogs that felt an unusually strong need to roll in the disgusting remains of a seagull and consume half their body weight in crabs and shellfish deposited by the receding tide.

Does all this good behavior mark the start of a new era in our lives with Beanie & Biggles? Is there such a thing as a naughty-suppressant virus? Or is it just the calm before the storm? And if there is a storm of naughtiness coming, will it have a more inspired name than “Frank”? Only Beanie knows, and she’s not telling.