“S” is for Stubborn!

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In our opinion, beagles win the award, paws down, for most stubborn dogs. Whenever we meet other beagle parents, we almost always ask them how stubborn their hound dog is. And invariably, the answer is “very stubborn!”

Some of the best examples to convey Harley and Scooter’s stubbornness?

For starters, they won’t come when they are called unless they think they’ll get a treat.  We can be sitting on the couch, all comfy and cozy, and call them over, and sometimes they just look at us. Especially if they are on the recliner.  ”Why should we move over there?  We don’t see any treats in your hands.”

Another example is taking them for walks.  They can be slow walkers due to all the sniffing they want to do.  And if there is something they really want to sniff or see, they plant their paws and throw their weight down and won’t budge.  Scooter is especially good at this.  And given that she’s heavier than Harley she can be hard to move.  Harley at least is skinny and has ADD and can be distracted easily; Scooter, not so much.  She’ll give us a look that says “Hey, I’m not moving yet, I’m sniffing here.”  We either let her sniff or have to drag her away.

These are some reasons why beagles are usually on leash.  They know when they are being called to come, but they have other things on their minds and will ignore you.  So unless treats are involved, they rarely come when called.  Priorities, right?

In the beagle world, however, “S” is also for sweet, squirrel, and sniffing. Especially sweet – Harley and Scooter are the sweetest beagles!

We’ll Eat Anything!

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Our dogs are most definitely spoiled, and perhaps no more so than in terms of their diet. Since Harley and Scooter joined our family, we’ve made sure that they’ve eaten a healthy, organic dog food. This is mainly because of our last beagle – beloved Gus – died from a liver tumor. He was 11 yrs old when we adopted him, and he came to us having been on a diet of Pedigree dry dog food for most of his life.  You know, the rather cheap stuff, but we figured it was okay.  Until he passed quickly from our lives.  We’ve always wondered if that cheap dog food had something to do with Gus’ tumor.

Our beloved Gus

So when Harley and Scooter came bounding into our lives, they’ve been given the red carpet treatment where food is concerned (and yes, every other area too!). A couple of years ago our dear friend Renee told us of the benefits of feeding dogs a raw food diet. So we began buying pre-made patties for them.

Talk about living high on the hog. They eat better than we do! All organic ingredients, stocked with lots of veggies, and you can buy chicken, duck, pheasant and even rabbit (sorry Pat and Karen), though we primarily buy chicken.  And because the patties are ready to go, all we do is stuff some in a kong (best invention ever for dogs) for their breakfast and dinner, and voila, dinner’s ready!

We'll eat anything!

They definitely love it.  However, they pretty much like everything and being beagles, consider garbage and cat poop delicacies.  They are not discriminating eaters by any stretch of the imagination.

Since Harley and Scooter have been on a primarily raw food diet (they still get non-raw biscuits and other treats) they’ve had very healthy and shiny coats and better digestion (we won’t go into details).  You can read more about the benefits here.

It’s not too expensive and worth the investment, as we just want these sweet pups to be with us for a long time.

It’s All About the Hunt – Arooo!

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By Suzanne

Arooo!  Arooo!  Arooo!

The sound of beagles baying and howling is a frequent part of our walk with these two. They were  born to hunt.

Most days we walk in the regional park near our home.  The scents they find there!  Cats, gophers, deer, wild turkeys, the occasional fox and coyote, and lizards (yes, they like to hunt the poor little lizards).

You can tell when Harley is beginning to get into his hunting mode – his tail starts wagging like a metronome, his sniffing sounds like a sucking noise, and he starts barking and baying.  A lot and loudly.  Scooter is more of a quiet hunter, but if there’s a very strong scent, or she sees something, like a cat, she will let out a high-pitched howl–almost a shriek. It’s very entertaining and often hilarious to watch them hunt, except when they are pulling my arm out of its socket in chase of whatever they see or smell.

One week I came close to a hospital visit, all because Harley and Scooter saw a feral cat:

We were in our park, near the top of an incline.  Fortunately I saw the cat first, and braced myself for when the dogs caught whiff of it, but despite holding on tightly to their leashes, I was pulled downhill at breakneck speed.  Thankfully I had on good hiking boots, as the path was still damp from previous rains.  The chase probably only lasted 50 seconds, but boy, was I praying that I wouldn’t fall flat on my face.  I’ve suffered a broken wrist and jaw before and would be quite happy to never go through that experience again.  And even though between the two of them they only weigh about 50 pounds, Harley and Scooter are strong little buggers.  They simply go crazy when they see potential prey.

Never a dull moment with these two.  Wonder where they will drag us to next?

The Break-in

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Another day, another break-in.  Fortunately canine, not human thieves.  As Mike recounted in an earlier post, the beagles have conquered many a garbage can.

We're good dogs, really!

This time, it was a kitchen cupboard.  It’s where we used to keep packages of rice, pasta, sugar and other staples.  We even put a padlock on the cabinet, but since we get into that particular cupboard fairly often, we sometimes forget to lock it.

I forgot one too many times to put the lock back on and came home on one too many occasions to find rice or uncooked spaghetti scattered all over the floor and partially eaten. (Luckily the dogs either didn’t eat enough of it or were more or less okay from it.)  After that, we removed any food items that weren’t in a can or jar–containers we assumed the dogs couldn’t open.  For Pete’s sake, sometimes we have trouble opening those jars!

On a recent weekend I temporarily put some bags of dry lentils in that cupboard, put the lock on, albeit not all the way locked. When Mike and I returned we found black-eyed peas everywhere!  Later, evidence turned up that Scooter had indeed eaten a bunch of black-eyed peas.

The incident that really got us shaking our heads was the time I thought I smelled pizza on Scooter’s muzzle.  When I made my way into the kitchen, I found Harley licking up spaghetti sauce off the floor with just a small amount of sauce left in the jar.  We’re talking a 25 ounce jar of spaghetti sauce that Scooter (we know she’s the instigator) somehow cleverly got the lid off.  It was a brand new jar that had never been opened.  A friend surmised that since I had found the unopened jar in the living room the day before, the cap must have somehow loosened or the seal inside popped.

Still, how a creature lacking opposable thumbs managed to get a lid off a jar of spaghetti sauce that I struggle with is a mystery to me. With these two beagles you just never know!

Our kitchen - locked cabinets and all

A Gift for You

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Harley hard at work

We woke up in the middle of the night to Harley’s barking.  This is not such an unusual occurrence, though we wish it were.  Mike got up and went to the kitchen to shake the treat jar, which normally brings the dogs running back inside the house.  This time it only worked to get Scooter out of bed.  Mike put on his robe and shoes, grabbed a leash, and went out to get Harley.  Turns out he was digging an enormous hole in the backyard, going after who knows what.  Mike got the digging fool back in the house, I closed the dog door shut, and that was that.

The next morning after breakfast, I noticed that Harley had been outside for a quite awhile.  I looked out the window, and there he was, digging that hole to China. Several holes, actually.  I managed to get him to come back in, and had to wipe a whole lot of dirt that was caked to his paws and nose.  He calmed down, and for the next day he only spent a little time digging, with some help from Scooter.

The following evening Harley was back at it.  Again, he had been out in the yard for a long time.  I had just gone out to check on him when he came around the corner.  It looked like he might have something in his mouth, and I assumed it was a bunch of dirt, as Harley likes to bite at the dirt to speed up the digging process.  I followed him down to the bedroom, and was about to take a look at how much dirt he had impacted in his mouth, when I jumped back.  He had a creature in his mouth!  I called out to Mike that Harley had more than mud in his jaws. It was a mole, and the poor thing was dead.  Fortunately Harley easily relinquished it to Mike, who immediately disposed of it.

Boy, did Harley want to know what Mike did with his (Harley’s!) catch.  He looked all over the room for that mole.  We distracted him with treats and pets, and he eventually forgot about it, more or less.

In the morning I took a good look at the yard.  There were about 4 holes out there. Tomorrow we will fill the holes in.  How long they will stay that way is up to Harley; I have a feeling not for long…

Dr. Spiderman

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Or, How Many Lives Does a Beagle Have?

This vet doesn't make house calls.

When we picked up Harley and Scooter at the Humane Society, we filled out a form they give you to make sure you are competent, loving, responsible and so on.  It was kind of a long form, with some difficult questions. (Reminded one of us of the form that Arlo Guthrie had to fill out while sitting on the Group W bench.)

One of the questions on the form had to do with how much money you expected to spend in the first year on the pet you were hoping to adopt.  Fair question.  People should know that pets cost money.  Beyond food and regular vet visits, shots, toys and stuff, there are unexpected costs.  If you adopt a dog thinking you are only paying a few bucks a week for dry dog food, you may not be ready for all that living with a pet involves.

Not being wealthy people, and having just had an older beagle (the famous Gus) that was

Gus LOVED the snow!

sort of easy going–while on the other hand knowing that beagles are a handful–we answered somewhat liberally (we thought) with something like $1500 for the first year.

You can see where this is going.

Suzanne and I very quickly learned both the number and website for ASPCA poison control. (They are available 24 hours a day.)

(888) 426-4435

http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/poison-control/

We learned how to mix peroxide and water, and how much, and how to get the dogs to consume it (dogs will eat almost anything to get to peanut butter.)  We even got the opportunity to weigh about a pound of regurgitated grapes to see how many might be still in their system after applying the above remedy.

After several expensive-to-VERY-expensive trips to the emergency vet, Suzanne and I noticed that one of the vets at the emergency clinic (the beagles, of course, seemed to have a way of getting in more trouble on the weekend) looks a little like Tobey McGuire.  Well, if you can’t have a little gallows humor when you’re looking at not being able to afford that vacation you so badly need in order to take care of the health of a couple of the sweetest creatures on the planet, then you might as well just start crying right now, Mr. or Ms. beagle “owner.”

So, of course, I started teasing Suzanne and the beagles that the dogs were getting sick just so Suzanne (or they) could spend a bit more time with the handsome veterinarian. Now, when they get into trouble we’ll often threaten them with “a visit to Dr. Spiderman.”  It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the dogs, they really didn’t want to go to any vet, any time, but it has helped lightened up Suzanne and my outlook a bit.

And, no, ladies and gentlemen, we are not going to tell you which emergency veterinary hospital Tobey McGuire works for.  You’ll have to figure that out yourselves.  We hope we aren’t back there any time soon to get his autograph, either!

Losing the Battle of the Garbage Can

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Not Harley and Scooter...but it might as well be.

Being dogs, Harley and Scooter will eat almost anything.  And like other dogs, they need to be “trained” to stay out of the garbage can. Well, as you’ll find out from the other posts on “Damn Beagles,” these two are much better at training than being trained.  Oh, and they’re smart and resourceful–and apparently determined.

Garbage Can Round X

Might as well get right to the point: a normal garbage can is not enough to keep Harley and Scooter away from the garbage.  That battle was lost quickly.  And while we may concede that someone could train these two “trailer park beagles” to stay out of a normal garbage can, we soon realized that this someone wasn’t Suzanne and me.

So, after putting the small garbage can up on the washer or dryer for a while, we went shopping for a beagle-proof can.  I don’t remember now whether we bought more than one, but we looked at more than a dozen, in several stores.  It took me a while, but I talked Suzanne into something that looked like it would fit right in at an outdoor park, or in a warehouse or industrial setting.  Yes, we got an industrial strength garbage can for our kitchen (or utility room, depending on where it proved successful, and somewhat on the aesthetics.)

Must have taken a day or so for Scooter to figure out how to push the spring loaded lid back.  Even less time was needed to get the lid off; a little longer to pull the plastic bags around the tightly placed lid; no time at all to knock the garbage can over…etc., etc.

I’ll digress slightly to say that, yes, we believe, with Harry Belafonte, that “the woman is smarter,” and blame Scooter for the more clever, determined misadventures that these two canines get into.  (This is based on experience, not prejudice, by the way.)

If you come to our house, you can still see where Mike strapped the garbage can to the wall so that Harley and Scooter couldn’t knock it over.  He’ll gladly, if somewhat abashedly, show you the velcro he bought to help keep the spring loaded lid from being pushed back.  Most obvious is where the small grocery bag hangs from the out-of-reach-of-beagles cupboard handle.

What you can’t see is the perfectly good, industrial-strength garbage can.  Mike finally conceded defeat and took that to the clean-up day with other useless household items.  He sincerely hopes that someone will rescue it for use in a warehouse somewhere where there are no beagles.