The furry rascal we call Daisy has now been with us for a full year!

It’s been a very squeaky year, and that squeaking has been highly infectious. When emerging from her crate puppy Daisy would squeak to indicate an imminent puddle event, and I felt the irresistible urge to squeak along with her. Perhaps if I hadn’t squeaked along with her and had shown more haste there would have been fewer of those puddles. Regardless, Daisy later began squeaking when seeing other dogs that she wanted to meet, and recently Monkey has begun copying her squeaking so well that it’s often hard to tell which mouth the squeaks are coming from. Speaking of mouths, she only has a small one and though some of her toys were designed for bigger doggies,  she’s become adept at finding just the right place to sqeeze them, so they’ve all been squeaking too.

It’s also been an incredibly cuddly year, because Daisy really loves to snuggle up to us and Monkey. She cuddles up to me in bed each morning, she drapes herself over Susan on the sofa, and we regularly find Monkey and Daisy together in their own little puppy pile. I really love my cuddly moments with her, but it’s all the snuggles she has with Monkey that put the biggest smile on my face; Daisy absolutely turned his life around after we lost Poppy. He’s a genuinely happy and relaxed boy 99% of the time, with the remaining 1% being those occasions where he’s trying to dodge yet another attempt at Monkeycide. Come to think of it, maybe that ratio should be more like 98% and 2%, because Monkecide has been on the rise ever since I found a tick on Daisy’s neck. Getting sprayed with flea and tick repellent each day? That’s attempted Monkeycide, right there. Regardless of the exact ratio, he’s happy the vast majority of the time and we have little Daisy to thank for that; despite the age gap they are an incredibly good match for each other.

Tackle out and not a care in the world. Life with Daisy is good!

About the only time we ever see grumps between them is when Monkey decides to have a roll on something smelly. They share toys, beds, treats and even us humies without any resource guarding, jealousy or disagreements, but Daisy is adamant that all smelly spots on the ground are exclusively hers. Fortunately any grumps that happen are extremely short-lived and they usually turn into an excuse for a chase, after which it’s cuddle time again.

Oi! That’s clearly MY roll spot!

As I noted in the previous post, Daisy is potentially our naughtiest ever Beagle. I say potentially because her naughtical resume is rather modest: she’s nibbled branches off sapling trees, setting them back a year or two; she’s caused me to suffer various minor injuries by raiding my pockets at inopportune times, and she’s snouted a disproportionally high number of unguarded coffee cups for her tender age. Oh yeah, and she’s littered the garden with debris from plant pots she’s nicked, and she’s pooped on our new deck so often that I’ve surrendered to the inevitable:

OK, so that’s actually a decent list, but it’s still all pretty standard stuff for a Beagle girl. Has she swallowed half a kilo of frozen peas (Beanie) ? No! Has she escaped her harness to go off on a solo mountain rampage for three hours, leaving me a nervous wreck (Beanie again) ? No! Has she boinged anything of note from the kitchen worktops and eaten it, like maybe a tub of grapes (Biggles) ? No, though she’s too much of a short-arse to jump that high. What about breaking into our potato bed, wrecking it and making off with numerous developing tatties (Poppy) ? No! Heck, even the truly angelic Monkey has done that last one, but not Daisy.

So how come we think Daisy deserves to win the Naughticus Maximus award? It’s all about her attitude. You see Beanie was really naughty, but she had an off switch; she knew when not to push her luck. And Poppy? She was the sweetest, gentlest little soul we’ve ever known, who just happened also to be a potato-obsessed kleptomaniac. But Daisy.. her brand of naughty is truly relentless.

To Daisy “No” always means “try again”. She genuinely doesn’t understand the “oi! this food is mine, you’ve already had yours so bugger off!” concept. The only reasons she hasn’t got a list of naughty achievements as long as a basketballer’s arm are that (1) 16 years of exposure to the Beanster has honed our anti-Beagle girl defences and (2) she’s a titch so it’s really easy to pick her up, restrain her and tell her about the legend of Monastery Daisy. I should note at this point that contemporary Daisy is such a naughty machine that my stories about Monastery Daisy have taken a dive into the gutter. As I first imagined her, Monastery Daisy was a pure-hearted little Beagle girl who hung out with the monks in a Tibetan temple hundreds of years ago, spending all her days contemplating the mysteries of the universe; more recently, I’ve had to admit that Monastery Daisy was probably a closet alcoholic, slurping the monks’ fortified wine from their simple wooden cups any time their backs were turned. Such is the corruptive influence of contemporary Daisy’s naughty streak! She’s a little rascal for sure, but she’s also probably the most loved rascal on the planet.

Back when Monkey was a smaller boy than he is now, his big sister Poppy took him up Loudoun Hill. I had to get my hand under his bum to give him a boost up the more difficult bits, but he made it.

Now a very much bigger boy, Monkey has escorted his titch-of-a-sister Daisy on her own little adventure up the same hill.

Somewhat embarrassingly I still had to put my hand under his bum and give him a little boost up as we traversed a big step early in the walk. Given that he’s such a big boy and an extremely good jumper, I have to put this down either to a sudden lack of confidence in his own abilities, or a desire to get his behind patted by a humie. I think the odds favor the second explanation because The Monkster certainly appreciates a bit of hands-on action in the bum area, but regardless, little Daisy was so eager to make progress that she scrambled up that big step all by herself.

I was the one needing help on the way down; a week earlier I’d damaged my knee in a rather embarassing trip accident that shouldn’t have happened to anyone under the age of 70. Monkey and Daisy were of the opinion that best way to help that knee heal was to pull erratically on the steepest bits, forcing me to apply the emergency brake every couple of steps. This is probably one of the  reasons why there are no Beagle physiotherapists. In due course we got to the bottom without aggravating my injury too much, and there was lots of contented snoozing that afternoon as both pups processed all the different sights and smells they’d encountered.

Once the snoozing had concluded, it was back to business as usual!

Note the little tan spot on daisy’s tummy. She’s our first Beagle to a have a tummy marking, and she’s also our naughtiest Beagle; could that spot be where all the extra naughty is stored?

Dogs in general are considered to be quite stoic creatures, and Beagles particularly so; that is said to be one of the reasons they’re often found in research labs. Our Beagles have generally been anything but stoic. I wouldn’t call Beanie a drama queen, but she learned quickly that the best way to bend a humie to her will was to play on that humie’s concern for her wellbeing. Biggles was quite a bold little boy, but he wasn’t stoic; the tiniest little thorn would bring him to a halt with his paw raised in urgent need of a magic rub. Biggles taught his paw-raising skills to Poppy and Monkey, but Monkey quickly surpassed his mentor. He isn’t merely non-stoic, he’s anti-stoic. Every day he faces the threat of Monkeycide; to survive, he must raise the alarm at the merest hint of a threat. Pool of water? A potential attempt to drown him! Unidentified food item? Undoubtedly poison! Grit between his toes? A deliberate attempt to hobble him, so that he can’t escape the next attack.

It’s good to rest..
But the prudent Monkey always keeps at least one eye open for approaching danger!

Daisy – as I found out just a few days ago – is very different. She may seem to be all softness and cuddles, but her upper lip is as stiff as a chunk of freeze-dried paddywhack.

During a recent walk along a country lane, a sliver of glass found its way into one of her paws. Not once did she stop and call attention to her plight; I only knew something was wrong when I noticed the rhythm of her walk change. She wasn’t limping as such, but I could see from her shoulder movement that she wasn’t putting full weight through one of her legs. I stopped her and checked the affected leg, but without my reading glasses I didn’t spot the glass; I just gave her paw a magic rub and monitored her as we continued on the walk. The rub seemed to have helped a bit, but she still wasn’t walking quite normally.

As we got close to home I saw a puddle of clean rainwater and tried encouraging her to walk through it, thinking that might help, but she was very reluctant. This time when I checked her paw I could see a little blood escaping from the wound and could feel the protruding glass. She’d have soldiered on without making a fuss, but of course I picked her up and carried her home, giving her little kisses as we went. Monkey got a bit jealous of the attention I was giving Daisy and tried to pull down my pants (its his way) but we got home just the same, and while I went for tweezers and my glasses Daisy somehow purged her paw of the foreign body all by herself. She’s little and she’s squeaky, but she’s also tough, just like her GoDog purple dinosaur and “sitting duck” toys!

And now for the ballet part of the post. I’ve been experimenting with the electronic shutter on my camera, allowing it to take a more concentrated burst of images during Monkey & Daisy’s play sessions; all those extra in-between frames have shown just how graceful and athletic they both are!

And this image shows why certain parts of our lawn look like a well-used racetrack: