Daisy has gained some impressive power-ups lately; she can now get up onto the sofa and despite her short legs she pushes Monkey into high gear during chases. The two of them have really learned to work as a team, something clearly demonstrated last week when they conducted a successful raid on the kitchen.

I’d let them both out into the garden for a few minutes and shut the kitchen door, forgetting to engage the full locking mechanism. I only left the kitchen unattended for the briefest of moments, but on my return I heard the sound of the door being opened, a couple of thumping noises, and caught sight of something small, fast and mostly black making a sharp exit into the garden. Monkey had opened the door, and Daisy had snook in and grabbed  something. I gave chase and saw Daisy scrambling down the patio steps with a bag of onions in her mouth. She was too short to carry the bag clear of the ground and as she struggled, whole onions and onion bits kept spilling out. I figured I had a chance of catching her but then her much larger accomplice shot past me like a bullet train and leapt off the patio, flying straight over Daisy and landing a few feet ahead of her. Daisy dropped the bag of onions and Monkey quickly picked it up before continuing down the garden at high speed; it was like athletes exchanging the baton in a sprint relay race. There was obviously no way I was going to catch Monkey, but I didn’t need to; he stopped as he reached his “laboratory” – that special place in the garden where Professor Monkey conducts experiments on his latest acquisitions, and he immediately fell for my oft-used “biccy scramble!” ploy. As soon as he heard that phrase, he abandoned the bag and ran towards me, sniffing for the biscuit fragments he assumed that I’d just dropped. Daisy came to join him, leaving me free to re-acquire the bag with its one remaining intact onion. Once I’d picked up that onion, I crumbled up a couple of biccies and threw them to where Little & Large were frantically searching, thus ensuring that the next use of “biccie scramble!” would have a decent chance of success.

I’ll finish this post with another dump of recent shots, including some of  Monkey perfoming rigorous tests on his newly repaired lunge-whip. This is his favorite toy, but it had been out of action for some time after over-zealous nibbling broke the cord at the end. It took just £2 to get a couple of meters of replacement cord, certainly the best purchase I’ve made in a while!

Since my last post Daisy has done a lot of growing. She’s bigger and heavier obviously, but she’s also more confident and gaining new abilities on a daily basis; only this morning she worked out how to get into Biggles’ old hammock-style chair. She’s become a much more satisfying chase partner for Monkey, going after him and using the occasional bit of strategic thinking to compensate for her lack of raw speed. Often when I’m watching them I can’t tell from one second to the next what the rules of the chase are or who’s leading, and I suspect that sometimes neither of them really know what’s going on either, but they always enjoy themselves and that’s the important bit.

A little while ago we moved Daisy out of her soft travel crate into a much roomier metal crate and installed a proper comfy bed in there instead of a practical & convenient but far from luxurious piece of “vetbed”. This was both an acknowledgement of, and a reward for, her much-improved bladder control, which she celebrated by sprinting into Monkey’s crate and doing a big pee right in the middle of his bed. I’m constantly comparing Daisy with Beanie and Poppy, and this was definitely from Beanie’s playbook. In general though, I think Monkey is gently training Daisy towards more Poppy-like behavior; he keeps inviting her for cuddles and little by little she’s responding.

I hope Daisy realises how lucky she is to have Monkey as a brother; he’s incredibly kind and generous towards her. When they’re both thirsty after a chase or wrestling match he usually gets to the water bowl first, but as soon as it’s clear she nees a drink too, he withdraws to let her go first.

He could easily win tug games but he doesn’t, prefering to keep the game going by constraining his strength to match hers. I might be tempted to call him the perfect gentleman, but there are some loopholes in his version of the gentleman’s code of conduct. For example, Susan soaked and froze an old tea-towel, making a soothing chew toy to help Daisy through her bad teething days, but Daisy has yet to experience it because tea-towels are definitely a Monkey thing. So, apparently, are girly pink puppy Kongs that have been chilled in the freezer.

I know I probably shouldn’t take this, but er…

I tell you what, I’ll just try it out for two minutes and then you can have it, OK?

What do you mean the two minutes are up already?

Fortunately I’d also prepared an adult Kong for Monkey and Daisy was happy enough with that one.

Just as Monkey is teaching Daisy some of his skills (like pickpocketing), she’s re-awakening the little 16 week old pup that still lives within him. Sometimes on evening walks he’s the one jumping up to grab his lead and chew it, and while they’re both very keen to perform their own re-enactments of the Andrex puppy adverts, he can unravel the whole roll in the time it takes Daisy to get just 30 sheets on the floor. As Susan noted, there must be a reason someone chose to call it “toy-let paper”.

I’ve dumped a ton of shots onto Flickr over the last couple of weeks, so I’ll finish by putting some of them up here, in no particular order:

A lot of things have happened since my last post, all of them good; probably the most important one is that Monkey and Daisy are absolutely best buddies now. There have been little some little wrinkles to smooth out, but they’ve worked a lot of things out for themselves, and I think we’ve helped sort out the rest.

One little wrinkle was that for one day and one day only, Daisy got it into her head that Monkey’s balls are there primarily as a teething aid. Seriously, every time they started playing he’d end up curling his tail in tight and heading for high ground to escape further nad-nibbles. In golden era Dr Who if you wanted to escape a Dalek, you could just run up a flight of steps. Unfortunately for Monkey, furry Daleks like Daisy can do steps with ease. They can also nibble through the underside of the hammock-style chair on our deck.

They can’t do tables though, and consequently we found Monkey on top of our deck table often enough that we put a thick blanket on there to help cushion him.

Clearly it would take more than just a blanket to fix this situation, so we changed both their crate routines a little to give Monkey more solo time, we lifted and held Daisy if she persisted in snacking on monkey nuts, and I’m sure there was some element of doggy negotiation going in there too. I don’t know what did the trick, but something did and by the next day Monkey’s balls were off the menu. From this point on, Monkey and Daisy grew closer and closer every time they were together. Daisy learned how to call a halt to play if Monkey started getting too intense, Monkey got much better at toning things down for Daisy, and we started seeing more calm, snuggly moments between them. As I write this they still haven’t snuggled down together for  nap, but they’ve come very close. One morning I had Monkey sprawled across my lap, with Daisy resting her chin on his back. Their breathing rates changed as they started to drift off, and then a delivery guy rolled up to the house and instantly broke the magic. It will happen soon, I’m certain of it.

A sure sign that they’ve bonded deeply is that they’ve joined forces in attacking the fencing around our more fragile vegetables. Once again I’ve been drawn into a Caddyshack-style battle of wits to keep them out. At first it was Monkey doing all the hard work with Daisy just tagging along, but now she’s taking a more active role, digging and creating new entry points that Monkey’s more than happy to use. At one point she wrenched a couple of tent pegs out of the ground that had been holding the fencing tought, and then bent the fence inwards to gain access to our potatoes. To me this seemed like a remarkable display of strength for such a little pup, but then Susan reminded me of Beanie’s antics soon after we brought her home; she easily and enthusiastically ripped away all the chicken wire I’d stapled over the gaps in the fence at our old house. Never underestimate the power of a determined Beagle, no matter how young & titchy they are!

While Daisy isn’t yet house-trained, we are spending far less time having  to clean up accidents. This is due in part to an additional three-day worming program with Panacur rather than our usual, Drontal-style wormer. It turns out Drontal isn’t that great at clearing up giardia infections. If you’ve got a pup with diarrhoea or watery poops, sometimes with a tiny hint of blood in them, and Drontal helps for about two days but then the symptoms quickly return, there’s good chance that pup has a gut full of giardia.

Though most of her in-crate accidents have stopped, Daisy’s little squeaky/moany commentaries haven’t; for us they’ve become her most distinguishing characteristic, every bit the equal of Poppy’s “This one!” paw action and Monkey’s cries of “It’s Monkeycide!”. While Daisy has a soundtrack for just about everything she does in a day, by far the best squeakage happens when she’s emerging from her crate after a nap. There are faltering, uncertain squeaks as she’s finding her feet and casting off the anaesthetic of sleep. The noises change, alerting the listener to the feeling of pressure in her bladder; a crescendo is reached as she crosses the crate boundary, conveying the urgency of the situation and the desperate hope for a puddle-free resolution. If containment is then lost on the very cusp of salvation, the abrupt downturn in the squeaking perfectly captures the pathos of the moment. It’s become such a thing that we squeak and moan along with her, joining in the audio rollercoaster. One time when I was down at the bottom of the garden and Susan was bringing Daisy out for an emergency pee, Daisy and Susan were squeaking loudly from the deck and though some distance away, I joined in too. The neighbours must have heard it, and if they had any doubts that we’re more than a little weird, well those doubts are history now.

To finish, some more shots from recent days and a little video of Monkey and Daisy playing: