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.

The furry rascal we call Daisy has now been with us for a full year!

It’s been a very squeaky year, and that squeaking has been highly infectious. When emerging from her crate puppy Daisy would squeak to indicate an imminent puddle event, and I felt the irresistible urge to squeak along with her. Perhaps if I hadn’t squeaked along with her and had shown more haste there would have been fewer of those puddles. Regardless, Daisy later began squeaking when seeing other dogs that she wanted to meet, and recently Monkey has begun copying her squeaking so well that it’s often hard to tell which mouth the squeaks are coming from. Speaking of mouths, she only has a small one and though some of her toys were designed for bigger doggies,  she’s become adept at finding just the right place to sqeeze them, so they’ve all been squeaking too.

It’s also been an incredibly cuddly year, because Daisy really loves to snuggle up to us and Monkey. She cuddles up to me in bed each morning, she drapes herself over Susan on the sofa, and we regularly find Monkey and Daisy together in their own little puppy pile. I really love my cuddly moments with her, but it’s all the snuggles she has with Monkey that put the biggest smile on my face; Daisy absolutely turned his life around after we lost Poppy. He’s a genuinely happy and relaxed boy 99% of the time, with the remaining 1% being those occasions where he’s trying to dodge yet another attempt at Monkeycide. Come to think of it, maybe that ratio should be more like 98% and 2%, because Monkecide has been on the rise ever since I found a tick on Daisy’s neck. Getting sprayed with flea and tick repellent each day? That’s attempted Monkeycide, right there. Regardless of the exact ratio, he’s happy the vast majority of the time and we have little Daisy to thank for that; despite the age gap they are an incredibly good match for each other.

Tackle out and not a care in the world. Life with Daisy is good!

About the only time we ever see grumps between them is when Monkey decides to have a roll on something smelly. They share toys, beds, treats and even us humies without any resource guarding, jealousy or disagreements, but Daisy is adamant that all smelly spots on the ground are exclusively hers. Fortunately any grumps that happen are extremely short-lived and they usually turn into an excuse for a chase, after which it’s cuddle time again.

Oi! That’s clearly MY roll spot!

As I noted in the previous post, Daisy is potentially our naughtiest ever Beagle. I say potentially because her naughtical resume is rather modest: she’s nibbled branches off sapling trees, setting them back a year or two; she’s caused me to suffer various minor injuries by raiding my pockets at inopportune times, and she’s snouted a disproportionally high number of unguarded coffee cups for her tender age. Oh yeah, and she’s littered the garden with debris from plant pots she’s nicked, and she’s pooped on our new deck so often that I’ve surrendered to the inevitable:

OK, so that’s actually a decent list, but it’s still all pretty standard stuff for a Beagle girl. Has she swallowed half a kilo of frozen peas (Beanie) ? No! Has she escaped her harness to go off on a solo mountain rampage for three hours, leaving me a nervous wreck (Beanie again) ? No! Has she boinged anything of note from the kitchen worktops and eaten it, like maybe a tub of grapes (Biggles) ? No, though she’s too much of a short-arse to jump that high. What about breaking into our potato bed, wrecking it and making off with numerous developing tatties (Poppy) ? No! Heck, even the truly angelic Monkey has done that last one, but not Daisy.

So how come we think Daisy deserves to win the Naughticus Maximus award? It’s all about her attitude. You see Beanie was really naughty, but she had an off switch; she knew when not to push her luck. And Poppy? She was the sweetest, gentlest little soul we’ve ever known, who just happened also to be a potato-obsessed kleptomaniac. But Daisy.. her brand of naughty is truly relentless.

To Daisy “No” always means “try again”. She genuinely doesn’t understand the “oi! this food is mine, you’ve already had yours so bugger off!” concept. The only reasons she hasn’t got a list of naughty achievements as long as a basketballer’s arm are that (1) 16 years of exposure to the Beanster has honed our anti-Beagle girl defences and (2) she’s a titch so it’s really easy to pick her up, restrain her and tell her about the legend of Monastery Daisy. I should note at this point that contemporary Daisy is such a naughty machine that my stories about Monastery Daisy have taken a dive into the gutter. As I first imagined her, Monastery Daisy was a pure-hearted little Beagle girl who hung out with the monks in a Tibetan temple hundreds of years ago, spending all her days contemplating the mysteries of the universe; more recently, I’ve had to admit that Monastery Daisy was probably a closet alcoholic, slurping the monks’ fortified wine from their simple wooden cups any time their backs were turned. Such is the corruptive influence of contemporary Daisy’s naughty streak! She’s a little rascal for sure, but she’s also probably the most loved rascal on the planet.