Biggles is going to be six years old later this month, and it seems he’s come down with an affliction that often hits nearly-birthday-boys: rascalitis. Unfortunately there’s no cure for this disease; all a vet could do is confirm the diagnosis, but let’s face it, the symptoms are unmistakeable:

• Mischievously nicking a bit of kibble out of his bowl at mealtimes even when he’s been told to “leave it”
• Cheekily barging into his sister Beanie so roughly that she’s literally knocked off her feet, even though he knows she’s probably going to bite his bum in retaliation
• Decorating our bedroom with the contents of my sock drawer
• Drinking my post-training milkshake and doing a sloppy job of hiding the evidence (I found the empty glass on his bed)
• Hogging Beanie’s special “cave bed”, forcing me to keep covering her with a blanky every two minutes.
• Playing a game of “chicken” with me and winning

That last one happened this morning during our beach run, right at the end of the offlead section. For once they’d both behaved impeccably, running off for a quick romp when I told them, but then returning unbidden just as quickly for a taste of chicken. In fact if anything, I’d have been happy for them to do a bit more sprinting about, but Beanie seemed a bit low on gas, which I attributed to the high intensity knicker workout she’d had earlier in the day.

As they returned to me after what should have been the final sortie, I followed my usual practice of getting Beanie back on lead first. You see Beanie is the “Batman” in our little dynamic duo; get her under control and “Robin” will follow suit. Those are the rules. Or at least those were the rules until Biggles suddenly found the courage to run off on his own before I could nab him. He ran straight to a trail of hoof prints in the sand, followed it for about 150 yards, then stopped and turned to look right at me. Without thinking I ran after him, and Biggles held his position until Beanie and I got within a couple of metres, at which point he sprinted off on the horse trail again.

I regained my senses and played it a bit smarter. Along with Beanie, I started running in the opposite direction to The Bigglet. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I ran, and I saw him stop and lay down, facing me. This is Biggles’ version of the game of “chicken”, and in the past I’ve always won it just by keeping going in the opposite direction. This time however the distance at which Biggles normally concedes defeat came and went. I saw  him shrink from a recognizable lump of Beagle boy to a distant and tiny dot on the beach. I stopped before he fell from sight completely, turned and watched for any movement. Although there was no way to tell, I felt sure that my cheeky little boy was looking right back at me, probably wagging his tail.

It was decision time; I could run further away, but in doing so risk losing track of him altogether, or concede defeat and run towards him, hopefully catching him somehow before we ran out of beach. Well that first option held no appeal, because unlike Beanie, The Bigglet is spectacularly hopeless at tracking. Seriously he must be the most nasally inept Beagle in the United Kingdom. He’s the only dog I know that follows tracks in the wrong direction, and if he had to rely on his nose to get back to us, he’d get lost and get himself into big trouble. So, in reality there was no decision to make. Beanie and I started back towards him.

Once again he held his ground as we got closer, and I could see him bracing himself for another sprint away. I came to a halt just before he legged it, and played my final card. I put Beanie in a sit and began feeding her my emergency reserve of chicken. Glancing over at my boy I could see the internal conflict etched on his face – carry on playing the game with dad, or just get the chicken? The chicken won, and he shamelessly jogged over to me with a big grin on his face. Needless to say I attached his lead before any chicken made it into his mouth.

So although Biggles won the game of “chicken”, as a well as a few lumps of actual chicken, I feel that I won the engagement overall. Next time however could be different. Biggles is a stubborn and cheeky little bugger at the best of times, but when he’s infected with Rascalitis, he’s a nightmare.

When we first moved to Ayrshire our back garden was invaded by a large yellow digging thing. Biggles was able to see off this trespasser using a combination of well-aimed pee and irate woofing. Now however we have a new interloping digger; much smaller than the yellow thing and it would seem possessing determination and obstinacy worthy of a Beagle. Houston, we have a mole.

I have no idea why the little critter chose to set up home in our garden. For one thing it backs on to a stream that typically floods two or three times a year, and for another, the garden is regularly patrolled by two vicious hunting Beagles who have between them caught and killed hundreds, maybe thousands of wild socks, margarine cartons, bank statements and green monkeys. Either this mole is stupid or it’s an extreme bad-ass of the burrowing world.

As you can see, Green Monkey needs some stitches in his bum following Beanie’s most recent hunting session. That could be you, Mr Mole!

My first attempts to shift the mole involved digging up some of its runs and flooding them using our ridiculously long and unwieldy garden hose. Beanie & Biggles were both keen to help me with the digging part – in fact Beanie in particular did a much better job of uncovering the tunnels than I did – but both of them legged it when the hose came out.

Still, after letting water flood through the entire area for a couple of hours I felt sure I’d done enough to rout the little bugger without actually harming him. The next morning my mole-free fantasy was shattered by the discovery of several new molehills.

The new “hills” were much larger than the old ones. It was as if Mr Mole was making a statement. After a bit of Googling I decided to repeat the hose tsunami and augment it by burying Beanie & Biggles’ poos in the runs for good measure (supposedly moles don’t like dog poo).  The result? Even more, larger molehills.

After Googling further, I am now of the opinion that the only way to get rid of our garden squatter is to use a trap, but Susan’s not at all keen and to be honest, neither am I. For the hell of it I’ve ordered some relatively cheap pet-safe repellent that may just do the job (in the Amazon reviews it’s 50-50), and I’ve told Beanie & Biggles to be on maximum alertness. Biggles has taken this to heart and has even requested a couple of garden visits in the dead of night. I doubt that he caught anything on those super-early morning patrols, but if he did, he’s keeping it to himself.

When conditions are right for deployment of the repellent I’ll give it a go. Until then, Beanie & Biggles remain at DefCon 1. Except for when they’re doing other even more important tasks.

It’s taken a few years, but it seems the North Ayrshire Council has finally acknowledged Beanie & Biggles’ tireless work in the field of poop pickup and disposal. At the start of one of our regular walks we saw this stenciled onto the tarmac:

The council refers to poop as “waste”, totally ignoring its potential as a pre-kibble appetiser.  That’s why we prefer to use terms such as “bottom sausage”, “smelly chocolate”,  and in very cold weather, “poopsicle”.

Note that the above “thank you” message covers only one aspect of our pups’ clean up activities. They routinely uplift dropped chips, pizzas and pieces of bread that would otherwise end up feeding pests such as pigeons and seagulls; they lick away drips from ice-creams, and they’ve even been known to use their absorbent fur to clean guano off the streets. Items that cannot be immediately removed – such as outrageously large horse droppings, bags of rubbish and so-on – are generally peed on to mark them for later collection. Occasionally their enthusiasm for their work results in legitimate roadside items being incorrectly identified as garbage; for example this very evening a gentleman’s motorbike was inappropriately “marked for collection” by Biggles. In his defense though I should note this incident occurred shortly after he’d had to woof at an excessively coiffured Poodle, which often makes him a bit free and easy with his yellow marker spray.

You might think that after all this hard work on walks they’d have neither the energy nor the will to continue their cleanup activities at home, but that’s not so. It’s common to see them whisking away discarded food packaging from the kitchen worktops and taking it down to the garden for proper disposal.

This strawberry container didn’t get to clutter the kitchen for long!

The binmen never look as happy as this when they’re at work!

So the council’s “thank you” message, while certainly welcome, only went part of the way to showing proper recognition of Beanie & Biggles’ tireless efforts. To make up for the deficit, I felt that a round of chews was called for..

Of course they got straight back to work right after those chews. Well, OK, maybe not straight after. I mean there’s nothing in their contracts that says they can’t have the odd nap, right?

Ayrshire’s best poop picker-upper is himself thoroughly pooped.