At some point after we’d moved to our current house we handed out some of the more exotic treat options to Beanie & Biggles, something better than mere biccies. Rather than chew them on the spot, the dynamic duo decided it would be better to race down the garden and consume them on the flat, lower part with the rear fence at their backs. This very quickly became a habit, and the habit turned into a tradition; Monkey learned it from the two Bs, and he in turn has taught it to Daisy. It’s just what you have to do when you get something a bit special.

It’s very comforting to see this little tradition continuing, a bit like putting on an old pair of slippers – not that I have slippers and if I did, I doubt they’d last very long with Monkey & Daisy in the house. By contrast, some other longstanding traditions have been firmly and unexpectedly broken over the last couple of weeks. The first break was delivered by Monkey. Having received special dispensation from Princess Daisy to have a go at her latest rolling spot, Monkey didn’t just give it a go, he gave it a go and a half. A fox had left a small poop in the garden, and while Daisy merely daubed a bit of this pungent eau-de-toilet on her neck and shoulder, Monkey came up from the garden covered in it. His head, his shoulders, his chest and his front legs, all were visually and nasally contaminated, and I realised it was time for Monkey to experience something that always filled Beanie and Biggles with the utmost dread: bathtime.

Err.. bathtime.. should I be concerned?

Up to this point, Monkey had got through nearly 4 years of life without ever having a bath. He’d had wipe-downs with wet flannels and hadn’t liked them one little bit, but he’d never had an honest-to-goodness feet-in-the-drink proper bathing experience. I was convinced he’d view it as a drowning attempt – Monkeycide – and at a minimum I was going to get soaked, the bathroom floor was going to get flooded, and one or both of us would get an injury as I lowered 20kg of powerful, struggling Monkey into a watery doom. As it turned out, he didn’t struggle at all, in fact he took it completely in his stride. Getting him in the bath was still hard simply because I had no desire to coat myself in secondhand fox-poo and so had to lift him at arm’s length, but he didn’t panic once. Who’d have thunk it: a Beagle that likes bathtime, or at least tolerates it without making a fuss, and that it should be the very same Beagle who hides under the lounge table at bedtime when he sees a doggy toothbrush in my hand!

Yesterday Daisy pulled off something even more remarkable than Monkey’s panic-free bathing experience: she caught an actual living thing. Throughout their lives Biggles and Beanie (especially) tried to prove their hunting prowess but failed dismally. Their idea of a stealth attack involved screeching at full volume while they were still 50 yards from their prey, and they never caught anything that was actually alive, save for the odd insect (and even then it was more by accident than skill). Monkey follows their example; he makes a big show of sprinting after the squirrel that frequents our garden, but he only launches his attack once the squirrel has already climbed out of reach. Perhaps he doesn’t really want to catch it; he just enjoys the chase. His predatorial ineptitude is a blessing, because (1) it’s entertaining to watch and (2) it allows us to avoid the less pleasant realities of nature.  Daisy of course never had Beanie & Biggles to show her how hunting should be done, so she did it wrong and caught herself a baby mole.

I’d just staggered out of bed after a lie-in with the pups, and I let them into the garden as I went to get dressed and prepare my breakfast. As is my habit I kept checking on Monkey and Daisy from the kitchen window, and I noticed some very odd behavior from Daisy. She was sat bolt upright at the bottom of the garden, not slouching in a lazy puppy-sit as she usually does; it looked like she was guarding something. Monkey was very curious, but each time he approached Daisy, she hurriedly picked that something up off the ground and distanced herself from him. It was obvious that whatever she had was valuable and not to be shared, and therefore probably disgusting or dangerous or both; I had no choice but to put my breakfast on hold and investigate. I found it difficult to close the distance on Daisy without spooking her, but after a few attempts I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I stuck my hand in my pocket and made it look like I was hunting for a biccie while I approached. I got just close enough to see the mole before Daisy once again picked it up and scarpered; it was still alive, able to move a little but injured and incapable of escaping. I’ll spare you the details, but I eventually convinced Daisy to let me take the mole and “take care of business”.

Having broken one tradition, Daisy has balanced things out by creating a whole new one of her own. On walks where we pass a low garden wall, she’s taken to jumping up and walking along it. In itself that’s nothing special – Beanie & Biggles used to do that all the time – but Daisy’s innovation is to stop at the end of the wall and entice me to pick her up, give her a cuddle, then carefully lower her back to terra firma. She’s definitely not afraid to jump down (she does much bigger jumps off the table on our deck, especially when she’s nicked something) so I have to conclude that it’s all about the cuddle, and the body language and eye contact she uses are just the same as when she wants a tummy tickle. I don’t know who loves it more – me or Daisy – but I do love it a lot.

As it’s the end of June, here’s a dump of all the photos I haven’t used yet.

Dappled shade: the perfect nap-inducing combo of heat without overheating

Another popular tradition: cardboard shredding, especially if the vacuum cleaner’s just been put away

Daisy looking pretty..

..And Monkey looking silly

The kind of silly that only a Beagle boy can do properly

The flowers are showing in force now..

Daisy’s lying in wait for another mole

Monkey’s busy not catching the squirrel, but enjoying it anyway

And when they’ve scared off the critters, they can still chase each other

It can be exhausting sometimes

You definitely need..

..a bit of chill time every so often

But life is good

Though of course it would be even better if it was teatime already

In my previous post I proudly reported that Daisy has learned to fetch. Not to be outdone, Monkey also acquired a new ability, though there is some mystery and perhaps a little shame in the fact that it’s taken him so long. The skill that he’s acquired is counter-surfing.

Being such a big boy and a Beagle, Monkey really should have mastered this a long time ago. When he stands on his back legs he’s tall enough to rest his front paws on the edge of the kitchen worktop and survey all targets of opportunity with ease. Should he see something he wants, he need only to stretch up a little further to grab it; no feats of athleticism such as boinging are required. And yet for some reason the thought of using his considerable length to counter-surf did not occur to him until last week. When it did occur and he peered across the worktop for the first time, he saw a discarded butter wrapper.

Susan was in the kitchen with him at the time, but Monkey didn’t seem the least bit inhibited; he reached forward, grabbed the wrapper and lowered himself to the floor with his prize in his mouth. The wrapper still had loads of butter residue on it; he’d been a clever boy, and he was in for a real treat! Abruptly Daisy breezed through the kitchen heading for the garden, and almost without pausing she snatched the wrapper and acccelerated from “happy but purposeful” trot to “Make way! Urgent puppy business about to be conducted!” which is just one small notch down from running.

Poor Monkey didn’t give chase, he just stood there, bewildered and bereft. He turned to Susan; no vocalisation was necessary as his face said it all: “What just happened Mum? And why do things like this always happen to Monkey?”. She got a sheet of kitchen towel, buttered it a bit and gave it to him, and all was well in the Monkeyverse for the next five minutes.

To finish, a hotch-potch of recent shots:

It’s easy to see Monkey as Daisy’s patient, dutiful and endlessly downtrodden other half.

She’s always humping him and nicking his stuff

And there are certainly times when Daisy can run rings round him…

But Monkey has his cheeky moments, and when he really wants something he gently but firmly asserts himself.

Overall I’d say he does alright for a boy who’s smart enough to open doors and defeat baby gates, but has at least two Dufus moments for every one of his MacGyvers.

Fetch doesn’t come as easily to Beagles as it does to some other breeds, but it’s good interactive fun and it’s a useful thing to have as dogs mature and aren’t as likely to really stretch their legs without a good reason to do so. Beanie and Biggles learned fetch as a byproduct of their agility training; I never managed to get Poppy to learn it, but I had success with Monkey and now little Daisy has picked it up using the very same slit tennis ball that I used to teach him. Getting the slit just the right size is tricky – it must be big enough to allow the insertion and removal of a small treat, but not so big that that treat falls out before it’s back in human hands. I got it just right for Monkey, and to his credit he never thought to simply rip the ball apart, which is odd given that he’s such a toy serial killer.

Daisy’s just getting to the stage where we can play fetch in the garden without her getting distracted – as long as I keep the session short and don’t throw the ball too far. In the house she’s more focused and can now fetch somewhat reliably with any ball, trusting that she’ll still get her treat if she does it right.

Monkey of course has moved on from balls and much prefers his big orange lobber. When he’s playing more vigorously it sometimes whacks him on the side of the head as he runs, but he doesn’t seem to mind, in fact I think he likes it. Boys are silly like that, and Monkey’s silly even by boy standards.