Beanie & Biggles like routines.
There’s the morning routine, where they get let out of their crates to have a snuggle with us in bed before we all get up.
Then of course there’s the mealtime routine. Very popular this one! The two of them wait impatiently outside the kitchen for nosh to be served up in their bowls. Once the food-maker emerges from the kitchen, Beanie immediately runs to her allocated spot in the hall and sits down very neatly. Biggles tries to do likewise, but more often than not feels the need to make a single jubilant “boing” (bouncing jump) at his bowl first. Once they’re both in position there’s a ten hour “leave” exercise (that’s ten hours in Beagle time, or about 5 seconds in human time) before they get the “OK” to tuck in.
At the end of the day there’s the bedtime routine, comprising of:
- toothbrushing (which is tolerated, more or less, in return for a cube of dried fish skin from Fish4Dogs),
- a trip into the garden for a final loo visit. Although he’s now 4 years old we still have to remind Biggles to “do his business” as he trots out of the door for this, otherwise he forgets what he’s being sent out to do and we end up having an emergency repeat loo visit during the night.
- the presentation of half a Dentastix each in their crates. They race each other into their crates for this, charging over, under or through anything that’s between them and their bedtime treat. Once in their crates, Beanie sits dutifully in the middle of her bed but Biggles, again overcome by excitement, has to keep sticking his head out of the crate for a quick peek to make sure that his treat is coming.
Now however there’s a new routine for them to master. It can come at any time of the day, but is always signaled by the words “What day is it?”. Yep, we got a doggy advent calendar from The Beagles Bakery.
The calendar’s made of fabric, with a little pocket for each day in the countdown to Christmas
The pockets smell good..
Really good!
But this isn’t a “help yourself” deal! You have to wait for the humie to do all the fiddly ribbon removal
Then you have to wait again for the tasty treats to be removed from their cellophane wrappers. Ideally this wait is done in a sit, but sometimes it just smells so good that.. well, BOING!
Beagles certainly like routine -our two even know what time of day it is! Most evenings JB will wake from his slumbers on the sofa to tell us its 10 to 10 – he likes to go up to bed at 10 p.m.! In the afternoon they can be fast asleep but at 3.00 almost on the button JB wakes to inform us it’s walkies time! How do they do it? Even the time changes in Spring and Autumn don’t fool them, they get it right every day!!
Yep our two have pretty good internal timepieces too, but of course when the clocks go back/forward it throws them off, and the period of adjustment can be quite noisy!
We used to refer to it as a ‘beagle clock’. Bonzo knew exactly when people were due home from work and would wait dutifully by the door ready to greet you. Mealtimes were exactly the same but like your two Paul she would get temporarily thrown by the biannual clock changes.