We had a brilliant time over the weekend. First Beanie & Biggles got to play with their new tyre jump:

Beanie took to it straight away but Biggles needed a little encouragement. I don’t think he was scared of it, he just doesn’t see the point in jumping through something when it’s easier and just as quick to go round it. In some ways I’m starting to think he might be the smarter of our two Beagles after all..

Anyway, after the agility practice we headed up to Irvine moor to catch what is perhaps the biggest day of the Marymass festival. The previous Saturday we got to see the Festival of Light Procession and the fireworks, this time there was a huge  parade, horse racing and – my personal favorite – the climbing of the greasy pole!

The parade:

The horse racing. Not ordinary horses mind you – these were huge cart horses thundering down the track:

The greasy pole. Teams have to climb a thick, grease covered pole to retrieve a huge chunk of ham balanced on the top. How hard can it be? Well in this case, it proved to be very hard indeed:

Did they succeed? Well..

That’ll be a “no” then.

On Sunday we headed up to Rumbling Bridge for another lure coursing session. The forecasts had promised at least some decent weather but it didn’t work out that way:

Is it still raining Beanie?

Despite the rain, our two had some great races. I was really interested to see what would happen in the first one, where Beanie & Biggles got to race each other. You see last time hosts Kevin & Sue had changed the course and for the first time ever Biggles legitimately beat his sister! He just religiously followed the trail of tripe juice left by the lure, whereas Beanie tried to go too fast and lost it every time the lure changed direction.

Would Beanie avoid overshooting the corners this time? Would Biggles repeat his success?

Well, “yes” and “yes, sort of”. Beanie did a lot better on the turns this time, and Biggles did get to the lure first, but only by missing out half the course. Beanie took a slight lead down the first straight but as they approached the corner Biggles disappeared from view. I glanced round the course and finally located Biggles’ cheeky little white bum a couple of hundred yards across the field, waiting for the lure to catch up. And, as happened many times before, when it did catch up it caught him by surprise and he missed his chance to grab it.

He gave chase and arrived at the finish first, but his cheating ways (or tactical thinking if you prefer) earned him a disqualification. His other races all went the same way, but given that he was the one who consistently got a mouthful of tripe-soaked lure, I figure he went home feeling like a champ!

Thanks to Biggles, Beanie got through her first round, and I think a further round, before coming up against a rocket powered whippet. She ran her legs off, and bayed her head off, but it didn’t get her through to the final. On the other hand Kevin let her poke her snout  into the tripe juice jar for a brief but heavenly sniff, so you could say she came home a winner too.

Some more shots from a great, if rather wet, day of lure coursing:

Oi! Gimme that lure back!

The full set of shots is available here.