It was this time last year when our Beagle family suffered it’s first loss; it’s perhaps because of that we’ve felt a strong need to embrace the forward-looking impetus of the New Year. I’ve started work on a full rebuild of our deck, Susan has already started germinating seeds indoors with plans for creating new beds for growing veg and flowers, and we’ve got some lovely bareroot trees waiting to be planted. Although it’s cold and the weather is still serving up some grey days, the overall feeling is that we should have a bright year ahead.

In the midst of all this work, Monkey and Daisy have somehow tied us into daily storytelling sessions. After Monkey’s had his breakfast, he just can’t settle until Susan has tickled his tummy and told him a little story. Sometimes the story is drawn from Beanie & Biggles’ adventures, sometimes it’s about all of Monkey’s fun times with Poppy, and when it’s story time he jumps onto the bed and rolls over onto his back ready to be indulged. If the story is too short or the tummy tickle not quite satisfying enough, he’ll chase after Susan and be a pest until he’s had a supplementary serving.

Daisy also appreciates the morning story, but she often has her own dedicated story session on my lap in the evening. This particular habit started as a means of calming her down when she gets overexcited but has only recently emerged from a crate nap. I scoop her up, sit her on my lap, give her kisses and cuddles and tell her about the adventures of Monastery Daisy, or Buddhist Monk Daisy, or Golden Age Philosopher Daisy. Use of the word “adventure” here isn’t really appropriate, because the story I tell always focuses on how fictional Daisy stays calm  and quiet in the face of stimulation, and never feels the urge to bite her brother’s balls, or pull his tail, or hump him vigorously, or go round sticking her snout into unattended coffee cups. Yes, protagonist Daisy is usually the contemplative polar opposite of the Crazy Daisy that sits squirming and grizzling on my lap. If I tell the story right, real-life Daisy relaxes into my arms, happily receiving a tummy tickle and surrendering to the urge to close her eyes.

Lets face it, Monkey and Daisy have done such a good job of training us that Poppy, Biggles and even Beanie would be thoroughly proud of them.

As I noted in the last post, we started the festivities a few days early to mark the gradual return to longer days. That didn’t mean that we’d run out of pressies by the 25th however.

Most of the pressies were replacements for toys that “reached end-of-life” during the year (or to put it more plainly, toys that were mercilessly destroyed by The Monkster). Knowing Monkey the way we do, we also included a small surplus to account for cases of infant mortality, like the squeaky cow that bought it within an hour of its unwrapping.

Both of our pups like toys they can throw around, but there’s a marked difference in how they play. Monkey is all about fun; he hurls his toy into the air, not having a clue where it’s going to land or who or what it might hit in the process.

By contrast, Daisy’s play is clearly a rehearsal for the day she catches the squirrel that visits our garden; any toy she gets is subjected to a brief but violent shaking action that’s no doubt intended to break bones and rip flesh. She means business!

For all that, it’s playful Monkey that actually kills toys, but he seems to do it from the perspective of a deranged scientist rather than a blood-drunk hunter. He considers it his duty to reveal the innermost secrets of a toy via a process of calm, deliberate and very thorough dissection. This only happens once the toy tossing stage has finished, so on this day we felt it prudent to remove the toys to a safe place before he could settle down and “follow the science”.

We’re now nearing the end of the year, a year that had us saying goodbye to three very loved little Beaglets. They’ve been on our minds a lot over the last few days, but the grins and snuggles we’ve had from Monkey & Daisy have helped make this Christmas a good one; I hope it’s been so for all our readers.

Finally, a festive humping and some more piccies.

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.

The posh nosh aspect disrupted our usual doggy 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 superior 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 closed 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 movie 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 turned 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 properly when 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.”