I see a question from Keb about the closet episode - no there are no squeaker toys. Anywhere. Anytime. My normally high-strung blue heeler goes apeshit over squeaky toys. I brought one home one time that the clerk at PetSmart told me was very durable, that her Rottweiler had played with for a couple of years. I heard Pepper at work with the toy and within an hour she had pulled the squeaker out and it lay on the floor beside the toy. Pepper's surgical removal convinced me that while they were an annoyance, they could also be a choking hazard. I returned it the next day for a refund. We stick with the hard Nylabone toys.

Ever since that camping-in-the-closet episode the dogs have a fondness for the closet, and will poke around every so often to see if a bed has been set up in there. Sometimes in thunderstorms I let the blue heeler in to hunker down where she can't see the flashes of lightning. And I will note that part of my discomfort of sleeping in the closet was because (as it turns out) I was within a couple of weeks of having my underactive thyroid diagnosed and I was stiff and sore because of that medical condition. Now that I'm on synthroid I could handle such a campout more comfortably.

The lab is very old, deaf, but as sweet as can be. He is incontinent in the poop department - when I walk into the den some mornings I see that he got up from his sleep mat and walked across the room to the dog door dropping pecan-sized pellets along the way. If he's really excited and doing his modified old-dog jumping he can leave a whole stack of them right there. Fortunately his diet is such that they're solid and easily picked up to flush or toss into the yard.   

As to the article about the 4000 beagles, one side story is that Meghan Markle is a beagle fan, having had a rescue beagle in the past as well as another one now. She and Harry adopted an older mama dog from the group of dogs sent to a shelter out in California.

Nice story from Buzzfeed.