Beanie & Biggles famously claimed dibs on a dead cow on the beach, while Poppy got herself a pair of bunny pants, but Monkey & Daisy have just landed the winning card in the game of doggy Top Trumps by scoring a whole whale.

Local papers had noted that a dead whale had washed up on the beach the previous day, but they’d also indicated that the coastguard was on the verge of removing it, so I expected it to be gone when we arrived for our run. Daisy immediately knew better, smelling something novel and exciting while we were still in the car park, but my nose remained blissfully unaware of the whale until we were less than a couple of hundred yards from it. By that time, the arm I was using to hold onto the leads had already been stretched about an inch longer than it’s counterpart.

I made a point of keeping a good distance from the carcass; its tongue was hugely swollen and apparently Police had been warning walkers not to get too close for fear that the whale’s guts could explode. If only the council had thought to erect “Beware: exploding whale” signs on the beach; that would have been very Pythonesque. They had however turned off the electronic sign informing visitors of the water quality, but if it had been working I guess it would have read “Absolutely minging”. We didn’t go into the water, and we didn’t approach the whale, but the beach’s resident tractor did both, tentatively trying to nudge the body further into the sea while avoiding getting trapped in the wet sand. Monkey became very interested in the tractor but Daisy’s attention never wavered from the whale and the jog back to the van was punctuated with lots of “throwing out the anchor” manoeuvres. In the end I actually had to pick Daisy up and carry her part of the way, otherwise we’d have spent the whole day at the beach.

As Daisy approaches her first Christmas, I’ve been thinking about how much she’s developed. She’s no longer that timid little thing who used to get so overwhelmed by groups of kids or other dogs that she would squat for appeasement pees; now she’s right in there loving the attention. Her confidence when meeting others has filtered through to Monkey, who had become downright fearful during that brief period of being a solo dog.

During her first month with us it was often a struggle to get her to eat her meals, so much so that we designated a room as her private “sensory deprivation restaurant” – a place where there’d be nothing to distract her from her food. Any time we let her have a novel new treat we had to set aside plenty of time to let her play with it first; it took her about 20 minutes to get round to eating her first chicken foot. All that has changed; she has a fully developed Beagle appetite and can dispatch any food item faster than Monkey, even though he has larger and more powerful chewing gear.

She’s our cuddliest Beagle by far; if she’s going to have a nap, she’ll find a humie lap or snoozing Monkster to curl up on, and often prefers to snuggle when she gets a chew toy she really likes.

She is however thoroughly spoiled. Spoiled by us of course, but also spoiled by Monkey. I can tell from her interactions with other dogs that her puppy license is starting to expire, but the Monkster remains very protective and indulgent of her. If she wants a toy he’s got, it won’t be long before he lets her have it. A couple of days ago they both snook into a fenced (supposedly Beagle-free) part of the garden; I announced a biccie scramble to recall them and while Monkey was by my side in a flash, Daisy couldn’t find her way out and began to panic. Biccies were on the ground right under his nose, but Monkey left them untouched to help me rescue Daisy. I hope Daisy realises how lucky she is to have such a gentle and caring big brother.

One thing she certainly doesn’t realise, or at least has no desire to respect, is the need to keep her nose out of our food when we’re having a sofa snack. Rules, boundaries and limitations? Not for Daisy if you don’t mind, and if you do mind, well they’re still not for Daisy. She’s more of a food pest than Beanie ever was, despite us never once giving her food scraps from our plates. We are slowly winning this war, but it is a struggle, and it’s not helped by the fact that she’s so cute.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Christmas, but I am looking forward to it this year with our newly restored team of two Beaglets.

Daisy has just gone through her first Halloween / Guy Fawkes Night combo, and she’s coped rather well. I made a point of playing recordings of firework displays when she was very young which may have helped; we’ve also been having thick low cloud cover for the last week or so and that has damped both the sound and visuals from distant fireworks. Perhaps the biggest factor that’s helped Daisy cope though, is Monkey’s completely chilled attitude to it all; a big volley of whizz-bangs kicked off while he was having a pee in the garden and he just carried on as though nothing was happening.

For much of his early years Biggles was similarly bombproof, but later on Beanie’s growing fears convinced him that maybe there was something to worry about after all; it’s definitely a good thing to keep the whole team feeling calm during this annual gauntlet.

Of course there are other things that can get Beagle pulses racing at this time of year. On their Halloween teatime walk we rounded a corner and nearly bumped into two Tyrannosauri Reges (I think that’s the plural form). They were a bit shorter than the ones in the Jurassic Park movies – only around 6ft tall – and they made squeaking sounds as they walked because various bits of them seemed to be made of inflatable vinyl. Daisy also made squeaky noises as she passed them, even though she has no inflatable components. Monkey didn’t squeak but after taking a second or two to process what he was seeing, he did release a couple of wooflets. Wooflets are what comes out of Monkeys when a full howl is not required, but a bit of pressure must nevertheless be released; sort of a woof version of hiccups. The Tyrannosaurs didn’t react to the squeaks or wooflets, so nothing further came of the encounter.

There may not have been any legit scares over the last week, but there were still moments of horror. One of them happened during a particularly heavy poo drop from the Monkster. Just as he squatted, Daisy felt the need to tangle the leads, putting her lead right in the path of the falling poo bombs. I had one of those slow motion Jean Claude Van Damme “Noooooooooo!” moments as I tried to get Daisy’s lead out of the drop zone, but to no avail. I had no gloves, and no means of wiping the worst of the soiling off Daisy’s lead, so I just had to get poop on my hands until I could get the two of them home and spend some quality time at our outdoor tap with soap and a pair of old towels. Why is it that you’re absolutely guaranteed to have an itchy nose when you’ve got Monkey-poo smeared all over your fingers?

I don’t know what those are Monkey, but I they’re not Tyrannosaurs because they aren’t squeaking as they walk.

Whizz bangs are going off but Monkey’s only interested in that bag of peanuts Mum’s just opened.

Halloween & Guy Fawkes: not a big deal if you’re a Daisy. Let’s hope it stays that way.