Beanie’s Ninth Birthday!

Beanie has just had her ninth birthday. According to an age/weight table that Pets At Home sent us, that makes her somewhere between 52 and 56 years old in dog years, and puts her into the “senior” age bracket. I must admit that as her birthday was approaching it occurred to me that there are more years behind her now than ahead. Happily Beanie herself doesn’t know or care about any of that, as a birthday romp on the beach ably demonstrated.

As usual Beanie is the first to be let off lead.

Also as usual, Biggles is so eager to join her that he pulls and wriggles, making it harder to unclip him!

Finally the Bigglet is unleashed, and races after his sister..

On the way back for a chicken top-up, Beanie spots Biggles coming in for a high speed shoulder barge..

She slams on the brakes..

And his Biggleship’s plan is foiled yet again

Senior or not, no-one gets to blindside the Beanster!

We got the dynamic duo back on lead just before anyone got ideas about chasing little birds all the way to Troon, and I took them on a long jog further up the beach and back. Even on lead, Beanie still managed to nab a small dead crab (she looks so cute with little legs flapping on either side of her jaws) and Biggles got a big tasty mouthful of horse poo. A couple of hours later the crab and poo were joined by a big helping of sardine cake.

When I was a kid there was a kind of ritual that accompanied the consumption of certain foods. With fish fingers for example, the upper and lower breadcrumb layers had to be stripped off and eaten before tackling the remaining body of fish. The procedure was reversed with any kind of sandwich biscuit; after carefully plying the two halves apart it was the sugary filling that had to go first. It turns out that Beanie & Biggles have food rituals too. In the case of sardine cake, the natural yoghurt topping must be licked off slowly and with precision, then finally the body of the cake has to be speed swallowed (chewing is frowned upon, and if you take more than 10 seconds to put it away you’re a wuss).

Beanie & Biggles already have an impressively large toy collection, but birthday tradition demands yet more. One day in Pets at Home we saw this little orange tuggable fox with a squeaky bit, a crinkly bit, and a rattling bit and.. well it just kind of dropped into the shopping basket. While we were distracted by the fox, someone with a big white bottom boinged a pig ear from the shelf speed ate it, so we had to give another one to Beanie. I left it to Susan to explain to the checkout staff that two ears had to be added to our bill even though there was by now no trace of them.

Of course the one rule in our house that can never be broken is that if one puppy gets, the other puppy gets too.

And if you’re the birthday girl, you get to play with both toys because of Beanie’s long-standing “what’s yours is mine” addendum.

Don’t let all this birthday indulgence lead you to believe that Beanie & Biggles lead spoiled lives of luxury however! You have no idea just how many hardships they have to face on a daily basis:

• On mornings they are grudgingly allowed into the big bed, but they have to share it with two humies.
• Sometimes when a covering blankie is required, the paw signal goes unnoticed for several seconds and a grumbling noise that sounds like a smothered fart must be issued to remedy the situation.
• No assistance is offered when a Beagle has to turn himself/herself during an intense napping session.
• Mealtimes are often really, really late. Like minutes late. Seriously.

In fact when you consider what a tough life Beanie’s had, it’s hard to believe she’s made it to the grand age of nine years old!

Happy Birthday Beanie! Double-digits next year!