Over the years my index fingers have become surprisingly powerful. I’m not talking about physical strength here; I’m talking about their ability to bend various furry and hairy critters to my will – a power ably demonstrated on the return leg of our main dog walk one day last week.

We were just a few minutes from home when we came upon an escaped black bullock. His head was around my chest height, and while he hadn’t bulked up to any great degree as yet, he wasn’t exactly a feather-weight either. As soon as he spotted us, he approached us slowly but with purpose. I considered turning around and taking a circuitous route back home, but that would have added a good 90 minutes to our walk, and I wasn’t wild about that idea. Instead, I made steady eye contact and pointed my index finger of authority (IFOA) right at him. It worked! He backed up and we walked straight past him. Daisy was kind of curious about him and kept looking, but Monkey just kept his head down and my legs firmly between him and this black-clad agent of Monkeycide.

A few seconds later the bull was behind us and things were looking good, so of course it was at this moment that Monkey felt compelled to halt our progress for a quick stress-relieving pee. Honestly it would have been much better if he’d waited until we were further away, and when I looked back I could see that the young bull was gaining confidence and attitude. He made a couple of charging motions towards us, each time slamming on the brakes after a short distance, but clearly trying to build up courage for something more serious. I gave him the IFOA again and reinforced it with a loud “Oi!”. Again it worked, but not wishing to push our luck I tugged Monkey into motion; soon the bull had given up on us and we were home free.

In the past I’ve used the same power-finger technique to subdue aggressive farm collies, stroppy geese and even monkeys.. well a particular Beagle boy called Monkey anyway.. but despite all this success, there is still one creature that remains immune to the IFOA: Daisy.

In fact she’s not just immune it, she’s downright disrespectful. If I point my finger at her to ward off a food raid while I’m having a TV snack, she’ll often lick my finger and then continue to make advances towards my nosh. About the only thing that really gives her pause is her harness; bring that into the room and she tries to hide her head. She’s two years old now but still seems to believe that if she can’t see her harness, it can’t see her and she won’t have to put it on. Statistically this strategy is not a winner, but it doesn’t stop her trying.

More photos:

OK, I’m not sure about this, but I think I might be just a little late with today’s walk…

I do want the walk Dad, but maybe we can skip the harness?

The daffs are out in force in our garden..

And most of them are still standing..

..despite all the wrestling and chasing that goes on!

Speaking of chasing..

..if you can’t always outpace your opponent you can still sometimes outsmart them!

More sunny days like this please!!

Spring has arrived. It’s the time of year when a Monkey boy’s thoughts to turn to performing inappropriate hip movements with luxury purple sofa blankies, but this spring has brought forth an additional behavior – one that is apparently common amongst fully intact boys, but which I had never seen or heard of before: teeth chattering. When Daisy squats for a pee on a walk, I dig through my pockets to reward her with a treat (yes, that habit is still ongoing) and Monkey moves in and gives the pee residue his undivided attention, sniffing it, licking it and where possible, lapping it up. Once I’ve treated Daisy I am obliged also to offer a treat to Monkey (due to the longstanding “if one puppy gets” rule) and it’s then that I observe it: chattering teeth, staccato breathing and a slightly crazed look in his eyes.

It’s exactly the same look he gets when aroused by the aforementioned purple sofa blankie. It evokes in me memories of  Hannibal Lector talking about fava beans, or maybe the particularly bitey Cenobites from the Hellraiser movies. It’s something I never saw at all with Biggles (who of course had “the op”), and never saw previously with The Monkster, though to be fair I might still be unaware of it if it weren’t for Daisy’s pee-pee biccie ritual. Regardless, it is apparently a common randy boy thing and confirms what I always say about Monkey: he is in many ways the sweetest, most innocent little soul I’ve ever known, but he’s also a raging pervert.

Yes Monkey is undeniably a perv, yet it’s still Daisy who does most of the humping

Sadly, I must report that we’ve been having sleepless nights over The Monkster of late. It’s all because I did the most heartless, cruel thing a supposedly caring humie can do to a Beagle boy: I put his existing crate bed in the wash, and slipped another new one in its place. I don’t feel the least bit guilty about this, but all the crashing and banging as he goes through yet another round of bed making does keep us awake. I mean I put it in there, it’s a perfect fit, it lies flat and it’s gloriously soft and furry; all he has to do is lie down it and nod off, but he doesn’t because it’s different and he has to exercise those bed-making “skills” of his.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve folded the sofa blankie to produce a thick, soft topper only to watch him spend five minutes kicking it out of shape and pulling it with his mouth until what’s left is lumpy mess. And then what happens? He tries to lie down it, realizes he’s screwed it up and makes a quick exit to the rug or the other sofa, which will soon be perfect – after just a few small bed-making tweaks. We called him Monkey. We should have called him Dufus.

More recent pics…

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The world’s loudest doorbell and most insistent morning alarm – otherwise known as Daisy – has just had her second birthday.

She didn’t use to be so vocal; when she first came to us she was as timid and quiet as a mouse. We still see glimpses of that timidity: on a recent beach run Daisy’s extender lead slipped out of my rain-soaked grip and slid down Monkey’s lead before colliding unceremoniously with her bum. She yelped, tucked her tail and cowered like a still-traumatised rescue dog from an abusive home. I gave her a cuddle and a kiss to reassure her, and I half expected Monkey to come running to her aid but he didn’t; he was otherwise occupied with a challenging and artistic poo, carefully depositing his logs on a particularly high but narrow clump of grass.  Perhaps Monkey has simply attended too many Daisy “emergencies” that turned out to be nothing of the sort. Regardless, once she’d had a sufficiently soppy moment with me she returned to her normal state: that of a cocky little street urchin with a princess complex.

In recent months she’s discovered her inner Biggles. Like our much-missed boy she loves to keep watch by the window and pass ear-splitting judgement on anyone and anything that dares to enter her field of view. Unlike Biggles, she’s such a short-arse that she has to mount the back of the sofa to see out of the window properly. Monkey of course is not the least bit height-challenged and can often be found alongside Daisy on the lower tier of the sofa, resting on his elbows for comfort when a gobbing-off lasts longer than expected.

Sometimes I feel you don’t fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation outside Dad!

Daisy has an inner Beanie too; she’s got a quartz-accurate internal timer for mealtimes, but since breakfast is so very important she’s taken to sounding the alarm a few minutes early each morning. It starts with an understated dripping-tap whimper, but can quickly escalate to a warbling scream if no humie gets out of bed to begin the serving process.

As soon as the bowls go down and the crates are opened she bursts out and sprints for all she’s worth, but Susan maintains that Daisy is still a long way from reaching Poppy’s legendary breakfast speed. Like a top-end sports car Poppy had the Beagle equivalent of launch control, and would drift her way through the corners to come to a perfectly executed skid-stop right over her bowl.

Speaking of speed-eating, there was plenty of that going on when Susan finished adding the mashed potato “icing” to a certain little miss’s birthday cake. Admittedly our version of the cake didn’t look quite like the photo on the Battersea website where I found the recipe, but Daisy and Monkey got very excited about it all the same.

The following shot is horribly out of focus, but it still captures the speed and efficacy of Daisy’s snatch-and-grab cake raids. Just as I was preparing to serve up her second slice – complete with meaty stick instead of a candle – she pogo-sticked to my shoulder-height and grabbed the stick along with a mouthful of mashed potato. Truly she now has the full Beagle skillset.

In the space of a couple of minutes the whole cake was in Beagle tummies and the plate it was resting on was scrupulously clean. You might think that a whole cake in one serving was a bit over-indulgent, but trust me they’d earned it on their walk up Loudoun hill the previous day!

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Their last visit to Loudoun had been some time ago so all the sniffs were new, intense and exciting. Also exciting was the guy who was chilling out by the summit trig point; he was wearing a bright orange Beanie hat and every time he sat up, that little orange blob popped into view and drove Monkey and Daisy wild. There was much woofing from both of them, but predictably it was Daisy who contributed the most noise pollution. This was Daisy for the first 20 minutes after we got back home:

An announcement from the palace: HRH Princess Daisy is properly knackered!

Normal operations were of course restored the next day, once the cake had been digested and the sun had come out!

There’s never a bad time to have a Beagle birthday, but early March is I think particularly good; the days are getting longer, the sun’s putting in more appearances, and all the early bulbs are starting to show. What better time to celebrate the bright little girl who came into our lives when we needed her and made all of us – Monkey especially – happy again.