The French have a reputation for being rather amorous – a reputation that seems to be deserved, judging by a recent encounter at the beach.

The three of us had just finished our run and were heading back to the car when we spotted a cute offlead French bulldog, and he spotted us. He had ball in his mouth, but this was quickly dropped as he eagerly approached. I’m always a bit wary when an unknown dog approaches, but I saw no signs of aggression and apparently neither did Monkey, who decided that on this occasion he would protect the pack from the front rather than from behind my legs. Monkey and the bulldog briefly greeted each other, but it became clear that Frenchie’s main focus was Daisy. The sniffing quickly went beyond bumholes, and even as his owners called to him, Daisy succumbed to the bulldog’s charms.

SHGD – Start Humping, Got Distracted

It must be noted that as Beagles following in the traditions of Beanie & Biggles, both Daisy and Monkey have some pretty odd ideas about how humping works. For starters, they’re pretty sure that most of the humping should be done by the girl, typically while the humpee (in this case Monkey) is lying on his side or spread out on the rug dismembering a toy. In theory humping while standing should also be possible, but height – or in Daisy’s case the lack thereof – is often an impediment. If the boy does any humping – and it does happen occasionally – a luxury purple sofa throw is an essential part of the process (as I’ve said countless times, Monkey is a perv and the blankie really sets him off).

Note to self: check Amazon and eBay for a Beagle-sized saddle with wide stirrups; put that on Monkey and all Daisy’s humping problems will be solved. Might be worth getting her a cowboy hat at the same time. Ride ’em cowboy, yeehaww! And all that.

Anyway, there’s Daisy lying on her side on the grass, with a randy French doglet doing the rumpy-pumpy into her ribcage. Daisy doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on, Monkey knows what’s going on but doesn’t understand how it can be happening without a luxury purple blankie, and the little French bulldog just doesn’t care. I barely had time to say “Well that’s a new experience for you isn’t it Daisy?!!” before the Frenchie’s owners arrived and unceremoniously hauled him off Daisy. Daisy seemed a bit disappointed by this and the owners apologized profusely, reeling off a long list of dogs, people and inanimate objects that their little boy had humped. I was impressed by the list and I think Monkey was keen to hear more details, but it was time get back to the car and head home, so we said our goodbyes and left it at that.

Speaking of the new Beaglemobile, Monkey now feels very comfortable in there but Daisy’s taking longer to adjust. I’m pretty sure this isn’t because it smells or sounds different to the van; it’s mostly just because Monkey often feels the need to “make the bed”, leaving Daisy slumming it on cold plastic while he lords it up on a small mountain of crumpled up vetbed material. His bed-making is so vigorous that on one occasion I became convinced there was a problem with the rear axle or suspension – until that is I saw Monkey’s big head bobbing up in the rear view mirror with a mouthful of bed. Biggles was also a keen but hugely incompetent bed-maker; did Monkey learn his “skills” from Biggles or are all Beagle boys this silly when it comes to beds?

In other news, Daisy has confirmed her reputation as a functional hunter and Monkey is learning from her. Recently she found – and with Monkey’s assistance – destroyed a mouse nest by our rear fence, and caught all the former occupants. I guess I’m just going to have to get used to doing clean-up operations, but at least our two aren’t nearly as bad as a neighbor’s terrier who once returned from a prolonged AWOL session at the local park with a deer leg in his mouth!

And finally as we’ve just tipped into October I get to dump a load of September photos :)

This photo’s been my PC desktop background for three weeks now. Sometimes Daisy is just too cute!

It’s chase time again!

Daisy’s fetch is consistently good now!

Monkey and Daisy’s default waiting position when they know it’s time for walkies

The clematis we bought for Poppy is holding onto its flowers longer than anything else in our garden

It’s chase time again, again!

And again!

And again!
Just lazing about..


Just pouncing!

Just looking handsome. It is the Monkey way.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Monkey & Daisy are proud to continue a longstanding Beagle tradition of charging down to the lower part of the garden when they get a special treat, such as chicken feet. I love watching the happy “we’ve got something!” bottoms from the house, but the view from the front is pretty good too!

How silly do you have to be to get yourself into the same predicament twice in 5 mins? This silly perhaps?

Actually no, because for once Monkey was not the chief candidate for the silly party! This time it was this normally sensible little thing here:

For some reason that only she can know, Daisy became obsessed with getting into one of our wire-fenced enclosures. The fence was too high for her to jump, and the base of it was too enmeshed in tangles of red clover for her to dig and push her way under. The fence did still have a major weakness however; it was highly susceptible to being leant on by much larger, 20+ kg brothers. Somehow Daisy convinced Monkey to press one panel of the fence down, and Daisy hopped right over it. I should volunteer at this point that I didn’t actually observe this happening, but strong circumstantial evidence – namely a Monkey shaped low spot in the fence – led me to this inescapable conclusion.

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” says the song.
Well Daisy’s brother is heavy, and it comes in handy sometimes.

So, Daisy was now in the enclosure doing whatever she planned to do, while Monkey was still stuck outside. Monkey doesn’t like being excluded when there’s something fun happening (it is in fact a form of Monkeycide) so he began to cry and howl. I was working elsewhere in the garden and on hearing the commotion I thought “whatever’s going on, it’s getting noisy so I’d better stop it.” Being lazy, I did something almost as silly as Daisy; in a loud clear voice I announced “Monkey! Daisy! Let’s have a biccie scramble!”

This was a dumb thing to do for two reasons. The lesser reason was that it could teach the pups that making a racket will get them biccies. The more important reason for it being dumb was that it’s basically the Beagle equivalent of calling the Batphone in the good old days when Adam West was Batman. “Quick Daisy! To the Batcave!”. As soon as she heard my announcement Daisy was desperate to exit that enclosure and come runnning, but she couldn’t get out! The bent fence panel was a one-way portal; easy to hop over in one direction, but very difficult and even dangerous for a titch of a girl to cross in the other direction. Over the next 30 seconds, the situation turned into a crisis of Beagle proportions!

Back at that top of the garden I was expecting to hear the sound of galloping pups coming for their biccies, but that’s not what I heard at all. Instead I heard Monkey’s comical “Oh! It’s not fair” howls turn into a panicked “What can I do! Someone please help!” woofing pattern, while Daisy was wailing and screeching as though hurt. I dropped everything and hurried down the garden, and as soon as I could see what was happening, I breathed a sigh of relief. Daisy was physically unharmed, but she was trapped by the enclosure and desperate to respond to the offer of biccies. Monkey – bless him – was equally desperate to help her, but unable to work out how, he was bouncing up and down on the outside of the enclosure and doing his best to sound the alarm. He could have just left her and come for a solo serving of biccies – and back in the day I suspect that’s exactly what Beanie and maybe even Biggles would have done had they been in the same situation – but that’s not Monkey’s way; he was going to stay by his sister and help her any way he could. He really does have a heart of gold.

I often wonder if Monkey remembers the panics over Poppy and that terrible day he lost her. He dotes on Daisy, that’s for sure.

For a moment it was comical to watch the two them, but the grin didn’t stay long on my face. Daisy was working herself into a panic, and I sensed that she was about to attempt to jump that fence panel and get herself genuinely hurt in the process. I started towards the enclosure again as fast as I could, and called to her, hoping to distract her from what she was about to do. Amazingly it worked! As soon as she heard my voice, she ran to side of the enclosure nearest me and sat awaiting my arrival. I guess all those emergency rescues of toys lost under the sofa had taught her that when Daddy’s on the case you can just relax and let him sort it out, just like in the kids series when Thunderbird 2 arrives on the scene. It may be heavy and slow, but it always fixes things.

Monkey didn’t relax until he saw me pick Daisy up and kiss her, at which point there was unmistakeable relief on his face and his tail went into high gear. I popped her safely down on the grass and instantly the two of them were bumping noses and rubbing their faces against each other, and I served them up a biccie each because that is after all what I’d promised. I righted the bent fence panel as best I could, told them both to dial down the silly, and started heading up the garden to complete whatever it was I’d been doing.

A few seconds later I heard Monkey woofing again. Like Biggles before him, Monkey has woofs that translate very easily from Beagle to UK English; this new woof was plainly saying “Daisy you absolute pillock! You’re on your own this time!”. And indeed when I turned to check what was happening, I saw Daisy right back in the enclosure. This time I didn’t announce a biccie scramble; I just picked her up, blew a raspberry on her bottom and spent the next half hour making a more solid repair to that dodgy fence panel.

Do you think Virgil Tracy of International Rescue ever blew raspberries on the bottoms of those he’d just rescued? If he’d ever had to save Daisy twice in the space of a few minutes, I think he probably would have done.