The Poppy Manoeuver – Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack

Now that we’ve chosen the not-so-little boy who’ll be swelling our pack to somewhere between 4 and 4.3 Beagles in a couple of weeks, we’re naturally wondering how he’ll compare to Poppy. Will he enjoy cuddles as much as she does? Will he cuddle up with her in a way that Beanie and Biggles have still to this day never done together (except by accident, immediately after which they parted much as in the “Those aren’t pillows” scene from Plains Trains and Automobiles)? And will he have a curious fear of puddles like Poppy?

One thing we do know for sure is that Monkey – as we’ve called him – likes to grip the humie who’s holding him; this should mean that he has no need for The Poppy Manoeuver. What’s that you may ask? Well it’s sort of the reverse of The Picard Manoeuver in Star Trek Next Generation. If you’re a Trek nerd like me, you may remember that the Star Trek costumes tended to ride up during scenes; to remedy this the actors – Patrick Stewart in particular – would tug them back down at the waist on a regular basis. By contrast, when Poppy’s sitting on a humie lap she tends to slide down towards the floor. She does nothing to stop this, so once every minute or so you have to put your hand under her bum and hoist her back up. BTW if you’re wondering whether she’d eventually save herself if we didn’t intervene, the answer is “no”. As an experiment one afternoon I did let gravity do it’s thing and she ended up deposited in a heap on the rug between my feet, looking a little surprised but otherwise unperturbed.

As I mentioned in my previous post a bond has developed between Beanie and Poppy. Poppy loves to follow the Beanster on her morning rounds of the garden, and likes to rub her cheek against Beanie’s whenever they’re together in the living room. They get quite close when snoozing on the sofa and in our bed too, but they’ve still not curled up together in the classic Beagle fashion.

I think Poppy’s starting to win over The Bigglet. He’ll still give her an Elvis-lip snarl if she strays close to him when he has a precious resource such as a sock, but when they’re out on a walk they do seem to enjoy each other’s company. Just recently I’ve been doing short sprints with all three of them together on extending leads, and Poppy and Biggles have taken to running alongside each other with big grins on their faces.

Poppy has now learned most of the little rituals we have with Beanie & Biggles. She knows that after a fun play session everybody runs to the kitchen baby-gate to get treats; she knows about “half-way biccie” on walks, and about “final wees” and “crates” at bedtime, and that the “if one puppy…” rule dictates that when one beaglet gets treats, all beaglets get treats. Come to think of it that rule is getting burdensome with three Beagles and it’s going to be even worse with four, but it is one of the key rules in The Book of Beagle Law so we’re stuck with it.

Time is against me now so I’ll quickly end the post with a few more pics..