For too long we’d neglected our crabapple tree in our garden, but over the last couple of years we’ve been pruning and feeding it to bring it back to a good state of health. This year it made an attempt at growing apples; sadly none have got to any decent size and some have already fallen, but those fallen ones have provided hours of entertainment for Daisy.

The rules of crabapple play are pretty simple. You throw it, you chase it, you roll on the ground next to it and howl at it, then pick it up and start all over again.

Monkey has no idea what the fuss it about; he sniffed the apples and deemed them unworthy of attention. As a mature Beagle he’s moved on from the silly obsessions of puppies, instead preferring to grab the loose end of a toilet roll and go sprinting around the house with it, or nick a gardening glove out of someone’s pocket and excitedly carry it to his open air laboratory.

Amazingly I planted around 80 new plants in the garden this week and between the crabapples and toilet paper and gloves, neither of these two numbskulls has had time to think about ripping them up. We haven’t even lost any plants to collateral damage from chases and playfighting, which is bordering on miraculous. And they say Beagles are hard work! What nonsense!