Go directly to basket. Do not pass “go”. Do not collect crumbs, socks or anything else.

We’ve now made it through three days without any more snarling episodes, but this must be due in part to the restrictions we’ve placed on our two. Basically most privileges have been withdrawn. No sofa time, no freedom to wander about the house unless escorted by a minder, no drinking out of our cups, no humping Susan’s leg and having a pee-gasm, and no free interaction with each other. On top of this, we’re running a strict “nothing in life is free” policy. This is extremely time-consuming for us, and extremely boring for our pups..

Lounging around on the sofa is a thing of the past..

Into your baskets, and stay in there!

It’s our own version of Dog Borstal, and it’s almost certainly overkill – in fact our behaviorist cautioned us that we could be creating an unnatural situation which could itself increase tension – but it’s only been for a couple of days and it has kept the peace, breaking the cycle of attacks. Tomorrow Heather Smith will come to see us and we should have a less draconian but equally effective plan for managing our two Beaglets.

There have been some encouraging signs that the storm has passed though; any time Beanie and Biggles lock eyes, they look like they’re on the build up to a play rather than a one-sided Fight Club session. What’s more, we’ve discovered that we can have a lot of control over our Beagles if we really get serious about it. This morning I sent Biggles to his basket while I got my breakfast, and he stayed put despite all the interesting sounds coming from the kitchen. Even more amazingly, when we all went for a group canicross run later on there was no woof-fest from our two. Until we actually got running, we had the quietest, most obedient dogs of the group.