This year we decided to start our Christmas celebrations on the shortest day (21st Dec here in the UK), as we’ve been really feeling the ever shorter grey days recently and it seemed right to mark the turning point. Inevitably this meant giving special posh nosh and treats to Team Beagle, and giving them early access to some of their pressies. This was very well received by the pups..
The pups got a crinkly fox and a squeaky cow. The fox got all the early attention..
..But then the cow got its moment in the spotlight.
I regret to inform you that while Mr Fox is still with us – albeit with horrific facial injuries and severly depleted white filling – the cow was retired from active service in less than an hour.
Unfortunately the posh nosh aspect disrupted our daily meal preparations. We’ve got into the habit of preparing the next morning’s doggy breakfast at the same time as their teatime meal; it just makes things easier to get them fed before the next day’s first coffee has taken effect. However, with actual chicken going into bowls instead of kibble, we forgot to do this and I only noticed the omission once the pups had gone to bed. I’m very much aware that Beagle hearing is supetriro to my own, and that both Monkey and Daisy are very attuned to the sound of kibble being poured into a bowl, but I figured I could get away with some late night prep just this once if I took appropriate precautions. I carefully close the bedroom door, turned up the volume on the second Matrix film which was playing in the lounge, then snook into the kitchen, closed that door, then proceeded into the utility room to do the actual dishing out and closed that door behind me too. So just to recap, I had three closed doors and a noisy action-filled film to muffle any inadvertant sound leaks from my untimely bowl-filling. Surely there was no way Monkey or Daisy would hear me?
Wrong. Very, very wrong. Daisy definitely heard me, and began shrieking to be let out of her crate the instant the first piece of kibble touched down in here slow-feeder plastic bowl. Realising that the game was up, I hurried through the remaining preparations as quickly as I could, headed back into the lounge – closing all the doors behind me – and tried to bury myself in the movie. Surely Daisy would calm down and surrender to sleep in a few minutes? The clock notched up five minutes of concentrated wailing, then ten, then fifteen. I saw no way out of this but directly through it; to give in would have set a very dangerous Beagle precedent, and anyway what else could I have done? Let her get up and have a small down-payment on her breakfast? Bad idea. This was grin-and-bare-it time. The film was playing at a pretty high volume, but Daisy’s volume was tunred up even higher. She peaked at 2o minutes with a screaming fit that would have had the neighbours calling doggy rescue charities if they’d heard it, but then the volume and the frequency of vocalisations subsided. All this from the little girl who needed trips to the Sensory Depravation Restaurant to get her to eat properely whan she was a pup.
Monkey undoubtedly was awake and aware thoughout the whole saga, but he never made so much as a squeak. I do note however that when I finally went to bed that night, he let out a grumble and sigh as I entered the room as if to say “Oi, be quiet Dad, there’s puppies trying to sleep in here.”
