This week I tried a new approach but it wasn’t very effective.

Unfortunately my paws don’t work well with those little buttons.

My least favorite thing is rain. I hate getting my face wet and rain has this nasty habit of dropping water on my face.

I hate rain so much that I will wait until the very last possible minute to go outside to perform vital bodily functions if it is raining. Mum says I have an iron bladder!

At bed time Mum and Dad make me go outside to perform these vital tasks and if it is raining I won’t go. A few days ago it was raining heavily at bedtime and I was refusing to go out when Dad did something very mean. He took several cookies and threw them outside. Of course I couldn’t resist and went running out to find the cookies but as soon as my face got wet I ran back inside to get dry (Mum doesn’t like my wet paws on her carpet so she keeps a towel handy to dry me and is very good at drying my face.

As soon as my face was dry the cookies called me again and I went back outside to find them……….until my face got wet again.

It took about 3/4 hour to find all the cookies and Mum and Dad still don’t know whether I went to the bathroom or not (I did but don’t tell them.)

I love to help Mum with her garden. She has got lots of really great things to eat growing out there. One year she got annoyed with me because I dug up the turnips and ate them before she could get to them, this year I ate the broccoli and Brussels sprout plants before they were even ready, and in the summer we race out in the mornings to see who can get to the strawberries first. Mum has a habit of covering her paws when she is working in the garden. I don’t understand why she does it because I hate anything on my paws – its not natural to cover your paws up. Mum has lots of these things that she puts on her paws, her gloves, and she quite often leaves then on the table under the awning when she goes back into the house. We play a little game with Mum’s gloves, I like to steal them and leave them lying around the house where she can find them. I often do this if I am not getting enough attention. Last week Mum left her gloves on the table and went inside. When she came out again she couldn’t find her gloves and asked me where I had buried them before going to get another pair out of the shed. I must admit I had had a lot of fun with those gloves and then forgotten about them. They were quite safe but Mum would not find them for several days.

On Saturday Mum was getting ready to work in the garden and before starting went around scooping up my deposits and that is when she found her gardening gloves. She called out to Dad to come and see and there in the middle of each of my deposits were pieces of Mum’s gloves. Leather gardening gloves make a great if not unusual snack. Mum has stopped putting her gloves on the table and now puts them away in the shed each time she takes them off.

For some obscure reason Mum was not very happy and shouted at me. Of course that was my cue to pick up my treasure and run away from her to another part of the house. In cannot think why Mum was so cross but despite that she laughed at me and what I was doing. She didn’t laugh today though when I finished eating the last of the fourteen plants that had been growing in the vegetable bed. Mum’s now talking about something called a “fence.”

Sometimes, after I get an idea I realize what a mistake it is and wish I’d never done anything about it and this week was one of those occasions. Mum left these tantalizing packages on the counter top in the kitchen when she went out and of course they were just begging for me to investigate them. They were just out of reach so it did take me some concerted effort to finally reach a piece of the plastic bag that I could grab hold of with my paws and teeth and finally pull the bag onto the floor. It seemed very interesting and I ran through into the living room playing with it as I went. Finally I ripped a whole in the bag to get at the goodies inside.

What a disappointment! I knew these things were supposed to be edible because Dad eats them but they were not very nice. Imagine that something that even I don’t like to eat!

About an hour later Mum came home and was not very happy to find dried black beans all over the living room carpet and me trying to look as if nothing had happened.

 

I love tissues! I love to tear them up and eat them and I love any opportunity to steal them – whether it’s raiding the bathroom trash can or stealing a napkin from an unsuspecting lap when Mum has guests over.

Recently I discovered pockets. When Mum or dad takes off a jacket and hangs it on the back of a chair; or jeans when it’s time for bed; or anything that has pockets where a tissue may be hidden, I wait until no one is looking and push my nose into the pocket to get at the tissues. Once I find one I run away to a safe distance to eat it.

How am I helping with the laundry? Well just the other day I heard Mum say to Dad that she hasn’t managed to leave any tissues in the pockets of the clothes she puts into the washing machine for a long time – that’s because I eat them long before laundry day. See how helpful I am?

Beagles are not small dogs but we are not large either. If I stand on my hind legs I can counter surf to about 4 – 6 inches deep. I stood on my hind legs near the sink and found that if I really stuck my tongue out a long way I could touch the edge of the bag. After several moments of stretching I managed to get hold of a small piece of the trash bag and started on pulling it out of the sink. It was not easy to do. The weight of the trash in the bag made it particularly awkward and I had to keep getting down when my legs got tired and would not support me. I was determined though and kept jumping up and working at the bag to get it and all the “goodies” in it down onto the floor so I could enjoy the feast. After about half an hour of trying finally the bag came over the edge of the sink. After all my efforts that is exactly what happened – the bag came over the edge of the sink – only the bag! In all my efforts to lift the bag and it’s heavy contents over the edge

I had succeeded in emptying out the things I really wanted into the sink and pulling just the bag over the edge. I was so disappointed!

Dad came back shortly after that and found out what I had done. He wasn’t very sympathetic! When Mum got home and he showed her the bag she laughed and looked at me. “I’d love to have seen Mort’s face when he got the bag out of the sink” is what she said to Dad, laughing all the time she said it. Oh well, on to the next thing. Mum has opened the patio door and the squirrels are in the persimmon tree. I’m off to bark at them so they drop the persimmons for me to eat. Yum!

Recently I was not feeling too good. My tail hurt and so did my back. Mum noticed that something was wrong because my tail was drooping down behind me and usually it is pointing straight out or wagging- but it hurt so I wasn’t doing either of those things.

Mum and dad have this insurance policy that covers most of my vet bills so they never worry about the cost if I need help from the vet. They put me into Mums car and took me to the emergency vet where they took some of my blood (not a pleasant experience) gave me something that made me sleepy and then took pictures of my insides. They could not find anything structurally wrong with me and then the vet asked if I had been swimming. Mum started to laugh because she knows how much I hate water. She told the vet “no” and the vet went on to explain about something called swimmers tail. Apparently you don’t have to go swimming to get it but it happens when the tail gets tired or over used and is similar to having pulled muscles.

The vet gave me some medicine and told Mum to keep me quiet for several days.

The medicine did make me sleepy but I recovered very quickly and the next day was wagging my tail and back to normal. The only problem was Mum was having a very hard time keeping me calm and quiet.