That’s Daisy bench pressing a full Monkey. Curiously she chose to use one front paw and one back paw for the lift – not something you typically see in the gym. 

Not content with doing physical training on their own, Monkey and Daisy have been roping me into their workouts. You wouldn’t believe the amount of effort it takes to pull them both onto the grassy verge when a van or even a big scary tractor comes trundling down the narrow farm roads on our walks. Monkey’s the worst, not just because he’s big and heavy, but because he actively resists as I try to haul him to safety before he becomes a Monkey-flavored road-pizza. It’s as though he actually wants to get squished.

Daisy seems to think that she’s the Beagle version of a kettlebell. Every time I open the utility room door to get to the fridge, she dashes past me investigate the bins, or the bags of dry wood for the stove, or the big dog food container, and the only way to get her out of there is to pick her up and carry her out. I also have to pick her up to get her out of the raspberry enclosure in the garden, and to get her off the back of the sofa, and to get her off the table on the deck if one of us has left a partially emptied mug of coffee up there. About the only time I don’t end up lifting her is when she sneaks into the bedroom and leaps on the bed during the day. Our naughty little girl still can’t be trusted not to pee on our bed if she’s left in there on  her own, and she absolutely will pee if she thinks I’m planning to remove her. At such times the only safe option is to lure her out of the bedroom with a biccie, and she knows it! Crafty little bugger!

When he was a much littler boy than he is now, we briefly considered changing Monkey’s name to Olaf; there was something Viking-like about the way he would blunder into rooms, knock things off tables and steal toilet rolls. In due course he became less clumsy and a little more cautious, and we realized that we had indeed got his name right. There might have been a hint of Viking in there, but he was overwhelmingly a Monkey.

It now seems that Monkey’s inner Olaf has risen to the surface once again; he’s discovered where I put my trousers at bedtime and has taken to leading bold raiding parties early in the morning to plunder pockets for hidden biccie treasure. As lead Viking on these raids he of course gets first dibs at the pillaging, but Daisy takes care of the raping part, humping him vigorously while his snout is stuck in my pockets.

They’re not just Vikings – they’re furry beserkers!

Daisy herself has gained an agility power-up as she can now leap over most of the wire-fenced Beagle no-go zones in our garden. She gained this new ability when a hedgehog visited one of the protected areas; her desperation to reach the hedgehog (and in so doing, wake the neighbors) gave her the extra adrenalin boost to make it over the fence. Once she’d done that, well those paltry wire walls lost all their powers of deterrence. At the moment I think she’s leaping them mainly because she can, but also because it winds up Monkey – who despite his superior height and strength has never attempted to do the same. It’s something I’m keen to stop; I’m worried she could hurt herself, but also as we head in to summer it’ll give her access to raspberries, potatoes and toxic sweet pea pods. It seems I’m forever doomed to spend time and money trying to keep pesky little girls out of places they shouldn’t be!

The Daisy Flea, this time jumping out of the raspberry enclosure!

Someone furry shouldn’t be in that raised bed either!

And they definitely shouldn’t be preparing to dig whilst in there!

More May pics:

There’s no shortage of bouncy, covered and mostly clean tennis balls in the pups’ toy box..

But once Daisy found this old, bald and smelly rubber ball lurking in a corner of the garden, she couldn’t stop playing with it!

Monkey likes toys, but wrestling & chases are his preferred way to play.

Sometimes it can take a little effort to get a chase started…

…but a cheeky bum-bite usually does the trick!

Job done, time to leg it!!!

And now we’re knackered!

I think someone’s trying to tell me that I should get on with building our new obelisks, and free up one of our favorite napping locations…

..because sometimes things get a bit cramped!

I always believed that Beanie could make a person drop food using the power of her mind. She would sit ever so neatly just within the peripheral vision someone eating, and stare at them intently. After a few seconds, even if the person was seemingly managing to ignore her, there would be a moment of miscoordination – a slip that would send a little morsel falling to the floor – and in a flash The Beanster would be there to consume it.

Last week Daisy proved to me that she also has mind control powers. It happened on the morning she’d barfed a portion of her breakfast onto our bed. After putting the bedding in the wash I gave her a small supplementary breakfast by way of compensation – not an easy thing given that Monkey has a sixth sense for detecting food handouts – but it seems I didn’t quite give her enough. Later during the walk she began nipping my calf through my jogging pants. This is something that Daisy has done routinely on walks since she was a pup, and I always take it as a signal that she wants a little moment of affection. I stop, she stands up on her rear legs and I bend down to meet her, and after at least 30 seconds of ear fondling, bonce kisses, tummy tickles and wagging, she’s ready to resume the walk. This little ritual has become so well ingrained that it’s almost muscle memory: stop, bend down, soppy exchange with Daisy, and off we go.

This time however my unthinking response was different. I stopped and looked down into Daisy’s eyes but before I could do anything else, my free hand had retrieved a biccie from my pocket. I stood looking at it, puzzled as to why I’d done it. Getting a treat out of my pocket is usually a very deliberate action, something done specifically as a reward for good behavior, yet there I was – biccie in hand – in response to Daisy’s “show me love” request. Of course now that I’d got the biccie out there was only one possible follow-up action: split it and serve it up to the pups, which I did. I pondered on the incident as the walk continued,  and I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow this “get biccie” response had been implanted in my mind by a hungry girl who’d barfed her breakfast that morning.

Hmm… need to keep thinking of that brick wall, or there’s no telling what she’ll have me do next time :)