Although Beanie has become much more open to cuddles as she’s aged, they’re still quite rare and valued all the more because of it. I can usually sneak in a quick hug when I’m fitting her harness for a beach run because she’s so distracted by the seaside sniffs. Similarly a game of tug presents opportunities for a pseudo-cuddle, but sometimes – if she’s in the mood – she lets me sidle up to her on all fours, rest my head on her neck and massage her ears. Those are the best Beanie cuddles by far; they have a gentle intimacy that is lacking from even the most indulgent head-end Bigglet snuggles. They are also however very, very difficult to set up; if my timing and body language is off even slightly, I can very easily end up making a woof or three.
In physics the law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, while in the Beanieverse a similar law dictates that a woof once made cannot be unmade, and will always find its way out of the Beagle in question. This is exactly what happened during my most recent attempt to set up the head-on-neck cuddle variant. I don’t know whether my transition from two legs to four limbs was too fast, or two slow, or predator-like in some way, but the second I started moving towards her she drew back into a play-bow and as she came out of it, I knew I’d made a woof. All the telltale signs were present – a tensing of the muscles, a directness in her gaze – in fact I even said to her “I can see a woof in there! You may not know it’s there, but I can see it!”. My commentary distracted her for a second and she tilted her head as though trying to make sense of it, but then out came the woof, and as is so often the case with a woof, it had a lot of woof siblings. That day’s cuddle attempt was over!
Of course dogs aren’t the only ones to have their own weird set of rules. Here in the UK there seems to be one concerning freshly dug holes; it requires three workmen (preferably council workers) to stand round the new hole and gaze into it approvingly for far longer than would seem practical. If you’re not familiar with this rule, take note the next time you’re stuck in a roadworks queue. If there’s hole, I can almost guarantee you’ll see the three-man ceremony. You may observe the participants making short verbal exchanges during this process. I’ve often wondered what they’re saying to each other. Are they simply stating the obvious, as in “Yep, that’s a hole alright”, or are they offering thanks to some ancient god of roadworks? Maybe the sight of the hole has inspired them to a deep philosophical discussion on the meaning of life? Regardless, without this 3-man hole viewing, the digging isn’t truly finished. As it happens I’ve been digging holes myself as part of our project to extend the fence by our house, and in the absence of two human co-workers I’ve had to rely on Beanie and Biggles to make up the numbers for my own hole completion ceremony.
Beanie showed no interest in the results of all my graft, but Biggles was much more appreciative; he is after all the only one of us who has regularly worked on his own digging projects on mountain tops and on our local beach. If anyone knows what a good hole should look like, it’s him. After a thorough inspection in which he nearly fell in, Biggles declared my post-holes complete. He also slurped some of the muddy water at the bottom of one of them, and munched on some of the extracted muck that didn’t quite make into the wheelbarrow. That’s a level of thoroughness and enthusiasm rarely displayed by human roadworks crews, and maybe something they should look to add to their procedures.
It has to be said that The Bigglet brings the same level of thoroughness to most of the things he does, including the nicking of the cherry tomatoes we’ve grown. While Beanie works like a sniper, hunting down and grabbing only the tomatoes that are close to ripeness, he systematically gobbles down anything that’s tomato-shaped regardless of size or color.
Beanie stands in a plant pot to reach the more advanced tomatoes…
whereas Biggles is much less discerning…
but you can’t say he’s not thorough!
Fortunately the species of cherry tomato we’d grown here wasn’t particularly tasty so Biggles’ premature harvesting doesn’t represent a loss, but when we try different tomatoes next year I think we may have to worry about more than greenfly and frost damage!