It’s now three weeks since either of us has had a Poppy moment, and three weeks since Monkey has had a chase or a cuddle with the smallest and best big sister in the world. Life resumed its familiar rhythm quite soon after we lost Beanie & Biggles; emotional time-outs happened when they had to, but between them we got on with things quite well. It’s been very different with Poppy; her sudden and wholly unexpected death knocked us clean off the rails. If you Google for articles on dealing with the loss of a pack member, many of them will tell you “.. and don’t forget to feed your other dog”. Seriously? After 16 years of having Beagle mealtimes as major events in every day, how could that ever happen? Well it very nearly did, and in response I actually wrote “Feed Monkey” on our whiteboard, scoring off each meal as I served it up so that he couldn’t possibly miss out.

One sunny morning I was working on the garden while Monkey sat alone on one of our loungers. Thoughts of Poppy interupted my flow and I slumped down on my heels for a moment and looked across to him. Without looking at me he dropped his head onto his front paws and let out a long, heavy sigh. It was a perfect summing up of how we were both feeling at that moment.

That’s not to say there haven’t been brighter moments in our days of course. Undoubtedly one of them was when Elmer – one of Monkey’s brothers – came through on the train with his mum Mimi. Early in their lives both Beanie & Biggles had sibling reunions but neither of them ever showed signs of recognition; as far as they were concerned they could have been meeting completely unrelated Beagles. This was not at all the case with Elmer and Monkey. There’s no way to know if they actually remembered each other, but certainly they were immediately and uncommonly at ease in each other’s company.  The positive effects of that reunion walk stayed with Monkey for the rest of that day; he was happier, more confident and more relaxed, and I can’t thank Mimi enough for bringing Elmer through.

Another memorable moment occurred when I took Monkey for a short jog around local farm fields. I had him on an extending lead and I was kind of letting him choose the route. We chased a rabbit at one point but the hunt was unsuccessful, and I can think of two possible reasons for our failure: (1) the big lumbering lump of humie to which Monkey was tethered was completely unfit for chasing down a wascally wabbit, and (2) Monkey has the mistaken belief that chasing something without baying one’s head off Biggles-style can have a successful outcome. Regardless, as our outing drew to a rabbit-free close Monkey figured it would be a good idea to leave the grass and run over a patch of solid, dry earth. It looked fine to me, and anyway Monkey was in charge, so we went for it. Two steps in my foot broke through the thin dry crust of earth and almost my entire lower leg vanished into mud. I burst out laughing and Monkey wagged furiously with a big grin on his face. I pushed hard with my other leg to get myself out, but it too plunged into the mud. I was now in a Beagle-style predicament, and I considered my options. If Biggles had been with me he’d have councilled me to stay very still and quiet until some other humie came along to sort it out. Monkey favours a completely different approach which can be summed up in one word: howl! I didn’t feel that either of these approaches was actually going to get me out of the mud anytime soon, but just then a nature documentary from years ago popped into my head. It featured the “Jesus Lizard” – a reptile that can actually lift itself up out of water and run on the surface. I weigh a lot more than that lizard and I’m a lot, lot slower, but the principle is the same: take steps as rapidly as possible and as long as each new step sinks a bit less than the last, you’ll make it to the surface. And so I did, but my shoes were (and still are, to be honest) caked in mud and smelling like cow poop, so much so that later in the day Monkey grabbed one of them and took it for a triumphal sprint round the garden.

Anyway, after all that verbiage, it’s time to get to back to what this post is supposed to be about: Poppyisms, or all those little quirks that made Poppy such a great little character.

This One

I’ve already mentioned Poppy’s assertive paw press to identify any door or baby gate that stands in her way, but in due course she developed a variant of “This one”, which I called “This One With Urgency”. It was used most frequently when her special home-cooked food had just been placed in the lounge, and she was on the wrong side of the gate.

Frightened Rat

At one point in the Poppy era we got a rat in the house; actually it came up from the foundations when I lifted floor boards to have a nosy. When disturbed, it would run from one room to another at remarkable speed. I can therefore claim without exaggeration that every morning, when her first breakfast had just been served, Poppy could exit her crate and sprint to her bowl faster than that frightened rat.

Death By Asphyxia

As noted in a previous post, Poppy would love to climb onto Susan’s left shoulder and press – really firmly – her ear against Susan’s mouth and nose, thereby posing a genuine suffocation risk. Having failed to starve her mum of oxygen, she often then move to alower position, but always find a suitable chin-rest so that she could gaze into Susan’s eyes before napping.

Spies Across The Bridge

I’ve seen a spy movie where the opposing sides would exchange captives across a bridge, with the instruction “eyes ahead, keep moving”. A similar thing would happen each night when Poppy and Monkey agreed to swap hooves; each would take slow deliberate steps away from their own hoof towards the other one.

Are you really using that chew?

Many years ago when I was at uni getting food from the canteen, we would each be allowed a single bread roll. Som epeople would actually have preferred two rolls, while others didn’t want one at all. A meme soon started up based around the phrase “are you really uisng that roll?”. Poppy had her own version of this; on occasions when she’d lost interest in her chew, she would go and stand over Monkey as he happily lay with his between his paws, not necessarily chewing it. No glances or verbal communication would be exchanged, but the meaning was clear: “Are you really using that chew?”

The garden of many fences

We have a special area in our garden where we grow fruit and veg, and we’d prefer not to have any Beagles getting in there to sample said edibles without permission. I ringed with area first with gridded cattle fencing; it kept Beanie, Biggles and Monkey out, but Poppy was small enough to squeeze through the gaps. “No problem” I thought, “I’ll just close up her entry points by criss-crossing some cord”. She nibbled her way through. “OK, I’ll use gardening wire”. She nibbled through that too. “Heavy wire then, that’ll work!”. She didn’t nibble through that, but somehow she could still get in to nick stuff. In the end, after nearly doubling the cost of the fence by buying a succession of cord and wire, I ended up spending even more to double-fence the whole thing. That finally worked, but I learned never to underestimate The Popster.

Time

One of the early changes we made to hold back Poppy’s epilepsy was to go to four Beagle meal times each day, spaced so as to have no long fasts in any day. In the hour before her bedtime meal, Poppy would watch me like a hawk. If I got out of my seat for any reason she would sprint past me and camp out at the kitchen baby gate, indicating “This one with urgency!!!” with her paw. I had to tell her “No Poppy, it’s not time yet.” She quickly learned that phrase and would reluctantly head back into lounge, ready to go again if I gave any signs I might be getting her supper. Later on when she came to trust that I would never let her miss her supper, she might go for a nap in our bed instead of watching me overtly, but she never came out of yellow alert. No matter how deeply asleep she seemed to be, all I had to say – however quietly – was “Poppy, it’s time” and there’d be a mad scramble out of bed.

Sleeping Beauty

After a trip in the van it normally fell to me to get the pups out of their travel crates and back into the house. The instant I unlatched Monkey’s crate he’d be out, but Poppy would stay in her crate until I stuck my head in there and gave her a kiss on her nose.

Unwrapping Christmas

I’ll never forget Poppy’s first Christmas dinner. Instead of just diving into her bowl and devouring its contents in a frenzy like a regular Beagle, she carefully lifted out all the components of her meal – the veg items, a sausage, a piece of turkey  and so on – and organised them on the floor. Once she’d surveyed everything she then began consumption, nibbling her way through the items in a very thoughtful, planned way.

Not everyone likes their own brand

Remember that scene in one of the Austin Powers films where Fat Bastard drops one and states “Oh everyone likes their own brand, don’t they?”. Poppy didn’t. She would make a sharp exit any time she did a particularly vile air-poop, and we soon learned to hold our breath if she scarpered to the other side of the room.

Yeehawwww!

Like Beanie before her, Poppy liked to hump her brother. Poppy’s humping style was more laid back than Beanie’s, and we often joked about getting her a little cowboy outfit for her Monkey-riding sessions.

Potato Obsession

Poppy liked vegetables more than any of our other Beagles, but she was particularly crazy about Jerusalem Artichoke tubers (also known as “Fartichokes” due to their effect on the gut), and potatoes. Poppy just loved potatoes and would always try to dig them up from our potato beds and nick them from the shed after we’d just had a harvest.

When we buried her we put a fresh seed potato in her little bundle, along with her little red dumbbell which was her first ever toy.

As Beanie and Biggles approached the end of their lives we wanted two youngsters to experience life with them and learn their little ways, so that something of them would carry on with us into the future. We had intended to get a boy first, and call him Monkey, because Biggles had always been a little monkey. As it turned out our first pup opportunity was  for a girl, and we decided she would be called Poppy, a nod to “Poppet”, one of the many nicknames we had for Beanie (I would often tell Beanie that she was “The Poppet From Poppetsville”).

Our first visit to see the litter was a blur of cuteness, but we came home with a card full of photos and video snippets which we carefully reviewed. We gave names to the pups based on their markings. One little girl with a thin, tapered forehead stripe, who we called “Sharp”, featured in the majority of the shots I’d taken. Of all the pups, Sharp had spent the most time with Susan, happily playing with the remnants of a pink toy and a little red dumbbell. We were near the bottom of the list of propective owners so I knew we’d get little or no choice in the matter, but I had the strongest feeling that Sharp would become our Poppy. When we were offered the pick of the remaining two girls and Sharp was one of them, it was a no-brainer; she’d chosen us, so we chose her. Honestly even after all that’s happened if we could revisit that moment, we’d choose her again; she was just so incredibly special.

Right from the start, Poppy was the most incredibly affectionate little Beagle. Many dogs get uncomfortable holding eye contact with a human, but Poppy loved gazing into our eyes endlessly. She had some kind of airway anomaly that made her a noisy breather as a pup; Biggles had something similar and also grew out of it, but while his breathing sounded like a rasping snore, Poppy sounded like a purring kitten. We’d pick her up, she’d happily snuggle into us, gaze lovingly into our eyes, and purr contentedly. It was easy to lose an hour with little Poppy in our arms.

On one of her first walks I introduced her to a neighbour, and while we talked a cat trotted past us. Poppy was eager to approach the cat and the cat didn’t seem to mind, so I put a little slack in her lead and let it happen. A second later they were in a standing cuddle together, gently rubbing cheeks, and both making faint purring noises. This is no lie or exaggeration, it’s just as it happened. The neighbour looked at me open-mouthed; she’d never seen anything like it, and neither had I. Poppy never lost that amazingly innocent, gentle nature.

In time she developed tailored cuddles for each of us. She would climb onto Susan’s left shoulder (always the left shoulder, regardless of how or where Susan was sitting) and curl up with her face pressed firmly against Susan’s and her ear closing off Susan’s airways. You wouldn’t want Poppy cuddling up to the residents in a care home; she could easily have suffocated them.

My personalised cuddle occurred whenever I was crouching down at work on something; she’d sneak in under an armpit, raise her head and hold her cheek against mine. I called these little encounters “Poppy Moments”. No matter what was going through my head at the time, no matter how crappy or stressed or worried I was feeling, I’d stop what I was doing and let that little Poppy Moment raise my spirits. In fact if either of us was feeling down, it was guaranteed that Poppy would do her best to make things better.

Poppy trusted every humie and animal she met; only two things gave her pause: toothbrushing and puddles. I overcame the fear of toothbrushing by introducing the “Botty In The Slotty” technique, where I’d reverse park her bum between my legs and brush her teeth from behind. Her fear of puddles subsided after a few visits to the beach, where she saw Beanie & Biggles happily trotting through the water without consequence.

As Poppy grew she became more physically distinct from other Beagles. She had a tiny chest for the breed, and this coupled with her long, rangy forelimbs led to us saying “Lost! In! Space!” when we were carrying her; her arm movements were reminiscent of the robot on that old TV show. Poppy could move very quickly over short distances, but the way she ran was, well I suppose one way to put it would be to call it lacking in efficiency: her front paws would travel in an arc reminiscent of the “wax-on, wax-off” movements in the Karate Kid movie. It was a little odd, but it worked. We found it impossible to stop her darting through doorways or through baby gates by phsyically blocking her, but she was a very biddable little girl and would (mostlly) stay put in a sit-wait if needed.

About 3 months after we got Poppy, we got her partner in crime Monkey. She was still growing of course, but he caught her up in size in just two months and rapidly overtook her, ending up nearly twice her weight, but her small stature combined with her delicate features and special nature instantly endeared her to most people she met, especially men. “Next time I see you, I’m stealing her” joked one Beagle owner we met regularly on our beach runs. “I’d take her in a second” was another common comment, and at a local park one of the staff stopped to chat and make a fuss of her, saying “If that’s what she’s like now, she’ll always look like a puppy no matter how old she gets”.

When her seizures started we were determined to find a way to manage her condition without drugs so that no side-effects could flatten her amazing personality or destroy her quality of life. We must have done well over 100 hours of research, and with her vet’s blessing we came up with a no-drug strategy. Some of the dietary changes we brought in for Poppy also had a profoundly beneficial effect for our older Beagles. The turmeric-based “golden paste” dramatically improved Beanie’s quality of life in her final months. Just before Beanie died Poppy had a  cluster of seizures and we added two more elements to Poppy’s diet – taurine and pre/probiotic. On the night we took Beanie to be put to sleep we had no alternative but to crate Poppy & Monkey and leave the house. We were afraid of what we’d find on our return; would all the commotion and stress have caused Poppy to have a seizure in our absence? As I shuffled into the bedroom, still reeling from losing Beanie, I saw Poppy in the “down” position on our bed, with her tail wagging, but it didn’t register. I even said “We’re back Poppy, are you OK?” as I approached her crate. It was empty. I panicked for a second, trying to work it out. I looked back and forth between the crate and a cheerful, relaxed Poppy on the bed, and then I saw that the top of the (fabric) crate door had been ripped open. Finally the penny dropped. She’d got into a panic and ripped her way out of the crate, but she hadn’t had a seizure.

As the count of seizure-free weeks mounted up, the feeling grew that we’d beaten her epilepsy. More than that, we both felt the hand of fate at work. Poppy’s epilepsy (or more specifically our treatment of it) had helped to make Beanie’s last months better. Now that was done, perhaps the epilepsy itself was done? I know how that sounds, but it’s something we both thought at the time. Shades of “A dog’s purpose” I suppose.

Just as we’d hoped, both our youngsters – but Poppy in particular – helped us through the loss of Beanie & Biggles. I gave up the battle to stop Poppy sneaking into our bed in the early hours of each morning, in fact I often went to sleep anticipating her nocturnal uncrating, because her cuddles were just so comforting.

The day that Beanie died we’d taken her buggy out with us. The morning after she was put to sleep Susan noticed that it was broken. This really upset me and I felt compelled to buy parts and repair it. More than two months after Beanie’s death, thanks in no small part to Poppy cuddles, I finally felt ready to dismantle Beanie’s buggy and store it in the loft. Within a few hours of that, Poppy had the little cluster of seizures that prompted us to take her to the vets. We still don’t know what went wrong at the vets or why she died.

Poppy was a perfect, gentle little angel with a beautiful, pure soul. She WAS too good for this world but we are so happy for every precious moment we spent with her.

Beanie, Biggles and Poppy are all in their final resting places in the garden – part of our lives forever. Each has a little flower bed with something special just for them – Beanie has a beautiful hand made steel tree adorned with lights; Biggles has what we call his ‘sonic wagger’ – a lovely, melodic windchime (let me tell you he sounds a lot better from rainbow bridge than he did in this world!). I’m building Poppy a lovely wooden obelisk ; this might cause some ructions on rainbow bridge as a certain young madam from Poppetsville won’t be happy that Poppy’s obelisk is taller than her tree!!

Biggles was always a handful on walks – his head was full of nonsense, but in crises (such as when Beanie got lost on The Merrick) I’d talk to him ‘man to man’ and tell him he had to step up and be a good boy.  Obviously he never understood my words, but somehow he understood what was needed; he never let me down. After Poppy’s death I stood by Biggles’ bed and asked him to take very special care of Poppy. His windchime answered. I know his littlest sister Poppy is in safe paws.

I cannot believe I’m writing this, I cannot believe what has happened. Our little Poppy has died. We don’t know yet know if it was her epilepsy or if something went horribly wrong with her treatment at the vet, but she’s gone.

Whenever we were going through a door or a baby gate together she would put her paw on it assertively as if to say “this one, this is the one you have to open Dad”. It became a little ritual that we always did; she’d do it with her paw and I’d say it. “This one”.