It’s been a funny old Christmas and New Year, and not just because of the virus and the continuing lockdown, but also because we’ve spent most of the festive season redecorating our bathroom and bedroom. Working on the bathroom wasn’t much of a disruption to regular life – other than the ever present danger of Beagles gaining access and turning into furry paint-rollers – but the bedroom re-do meant that both humans and Beagles had to move their beds into our big lounge. This was problematic because the Beagle bedtime routine has become so very well ingrained: first you get your teeth brushed, then you get sent out for “final wees”, then a humie breaks a big dental chew in half, shouts “Crates!” and you sprint hell-for-leather into the bedroom, dive into your crate and get a chew.
Everything went well on the first night of our relocated sleeping arrangements until we got to the “Crates!” bit. I was standing just inside the lounge, pointing clearly at the two blankie-covered crates by the head of our inflatable camping bed when I made the announcement, but still Beanie and Biggles raced each other to the bedroom door. I’d closed the bedroom, so I figured all I had to do was stay put, wait for the frantic door scratching and barging to subside, then call them to me using the well worn instruction “Get in here you daft buggers!”
I waited, and waited some more, but no furry people appeared. Come to think of it I couldn’t hear any activity at all, so I had to go and investigate. I found the bedroom open (not the first time Biggles’ frenzied boinging has opened doors), with two very anxious and confused Beagles sitting on the bit of carpet that was formerly home to their beds. They saw me, which didn’t really affect anything, but then they saw the dental chews in my hand, and suddenly I had their attention. The walk back to the lounge was a bit stumbly because excited Beagles were bumping into each other, into my legs and into the walls, and generally getting underfoot, but when we got there the penny dropped – their crates were in here! They both charged straight into the nearest crate, which happened to belong to Beanie.
“No, Biggles, you need to go into your own crate!”
Biggles popped out briefly, realized that he wasn’t in a crate (which is a legal prerequisite for the bedtime chew), panicked and ran right back in, whereupon Beanie scrambled out and into Biggles’ crate.
“No that’s wrong, you need to swap!”
This time they both crammed into Biggles’ crate.
“Try again!”
Both back in Beanie’s crate. I’ll cut this short by saying that it took a substantial number of iterations before they were both in their own beds, and it was with some relief that I locked the crate doors and handed out the chews. Things weren’t any better the next night, but on night three they started to get the hang of it, just before we all moved right back into the bedroom, naturally.
In between all the decorating and bed confusion we did manage to get in a few early walks to take advantage of the clear, frosty mornings we’ve been having:
And of course at some point it stopped being 2020 and became 2021, though nobody in our house really noticed exactly when that happened. Will 2021 end up being a better year than it’s predecessor? I do hope so, because the bar has been set pretty low.