Sue and Kevin Rose are holding a lure coursing meeting on Sunday 22nd August – all welcome. More info on their blog.

Paws in the Park is on at Rouken Glen Park on Saturday 4th September. Lots of activities to try including lure coursing, agility, agility dash (no skill needed, prize for the fastest dog) and flyball. More info on the Glasgow Dog Training Club website.

Then on Sunday 5th September Sue and Kevin are holding a special lure coursing meeting to raise money for charity. This will include fun races, fun dog shows etc. Again, more details on Sue and Kevn’s site.

We only have 5 jumps (although I’ve ordered another 6 and a tyre jump) so we had to adapt Luisa’s plan a little. Here’s the course that we came up with for yesterday’s practice:

And here’s the video of Beanie and Biggles running the course for the very first time. I was very impressed!

Today I decided to design my own course. I wanted to give them a nice long straight at the start and finish so they could really stretch out and pick up speed, but a little bit of complexity in the middle. Here’s the plan.

And the video of their first attempt at the course.

For the first time since we started doing agility I know what we can and can’t do and what we need to work on!

We’ve found that Beanie and Biggles do best if training sessions are very short (5 – 10 minutes max) and agility practice is very sporadic (perhaps once every three weeks). In between practice sessions we’ll occasionally pop out to work on a little drill for a minute or two. Any more than that seems to be couner-productive (although that might change in future). Yet they always amaze me with their progress from one practice session to the next. I guess a lot of skills from other activities are transferring to agility (and vise-versa).

So, that’s the equipment packed away for two or three weeks – after doing so well I think they deserve a bit of lure-coursing next!

Butterfly stroke over the long jump!

Beanie and Biggles gave it a quick try out when the rain stopped and gave it a big thumbs up.

The dog walk.

And the A-frame. Having looked at these pictures all I can say is it’s a good thing my dogs don’t go in the direction I point!!!

Biggles has never seen an a-frame before and it looked quite high….

But our intrepid little biglet was soon scrambling over the top.

Finally, the double act.

Ooeew – smelly!

Beanie and Biggles were very excited and kindly helped us unpack all the pieces.

It all went together very quickly and we soon had it assembled and located at the bottom of the garden. I went indoors to get some training treats and my clicker and had a think about how to go about teaching Beanie and Biggles. I figured the first step would be to build up their confidence – it’s bound to be scary for a little Beaglet when that seesaw starts to tip….

Then I looked down the garden and saw Beanie and Biggles taking it in turns to sprint over the seesaw at top speed – they didn’t even seem to notice the thing tipping!

That left me at a bit of a loss as to what to do. The dogs I’d seen at competitions all seemed to stop/slow half way along the seesaw so that it tipped slowly. How to get my two dare devils to do that? We played with the seesaw for a couple of minutes then decided to call it a day until I’d found out more about it.

I’m beginning to think that the pups were doing it right without me!

Beanie and Biggles were keen to do more so we did a little bit of weaving. The method I used to teach Beanie to weave doesn’t work with Biggles but I think we’ve now found an approach that will suit him. I break the weave poles into three sets of two poles and stagger them. This allows him to go through a full set of weaves quite easily – he only has to learn to walk between two poles and keep repeating. Gradually we’ll move them closer and closer together until he’s doing it properly.

Beanie is starting to get very good. She’s getting quite fast and reliably enters the weaves correctly from pretty much any angle no matter where I am standing.

• Throw the ball over a jump – Biggles jumps after it tail wagging furiously. Reward him well.
• Throw the ball over two jumps – Biggles jumps after it tail wagging furiously. Reward him well.
• Do it again – Biggles sits by your side, tail wagging like a propeller but does nothing. Then he snuggles up close to your leg and makes himself comfy.

OK, he’s bored (although he doesn’t look bored). Move onto something else.

• Call Biggles over a jump. Biggles jumps, tail wagging furiously. Reward him well.
• Call Biggles over two jumps. Biggles jumps, tail wagging furiously. Reward him well.
• Do it again. Biggles sits looking at you excitedly, tail wagging like a propeller but does nothing.

This isn’t completely out of character for Biggly Boy. During games of fetch he lets Beanie go get the ball. After she’s dropped it at your feet he picks it up and instantly drops it then looks at you as if to say “I did it too!”. At lure coursing he makes a beeline for the home straight and lies in wait for the lure so he can grab it on the way past.

It’s not as if he’s got a short attention span. At Heelwork to Music classes (which he loves) he’ll give me his undivided attention for a solid hour and he never seems to get bored.

We’ll give it a little bit longer – maybe we’ve just not figured out how to motivate him. But I’m beginning to think that Agility just isn’t his thing.

Beanie on the other hand is coming on in leaps and bounds in agility (literally) – despite next to no practice in the past year. Obviously skills from other activities are transferring to agility. I set this course up for her yesterday morning for the first time. She hadn’t practiced it – or anything similar yet she managed it first time. We still need to use a ball as a target to send her away from me, but not for much longer the way she’s going!

Today we decided to work on weaves with Beanie. We set up a little course with just six weaves and a few strategically placed jumps so we could practice entering and exiting the weaves from various directions. She was a bit sluggish but didn’t do bad at all given that this was her first time in almost a year!

Next we tried 12 poles and the most difficult thing for Beanie – entering the weaves after a jump. The jump gets her a bit excited and she tends to make mistakes. This took a few practice runs but we got there eventually.

Finally we added in a couple of jumps and a return pass through the weaves.

As you can hear in the final clip, Biggly Boy was now getting a little vocal about it being his turn.

Now in many ways Biggly Boy should be easier to teach. He tends to stay close and gaze up into your eyes with his tail wagging (unlike Beanie who initially would spend training sessions zooming around the course completely ignoring me!). But progress has been surprisingly slow. I think the problem is that he doesn’t enjoy flying over the equipment just for the sake of it the way Beanie did. For him it’s only about the reward at the end. Nevertheless we have high hopes for him as he always gets there in the end – in his own special way!

With the hard work out of the way it was time to get down to some serious business.

Noisy, who us?

We finished off with a game of fetch. True to form, Biggles retrieved his ball a couple of times and then took it off to his lair where he guarded it jealously whilst systematically destroying it.

Beanie was a lot more interactive.

It’s a hard life for a puppy.

Nope. It’s Beanie and Biggles doing a bit of (poorly) synchronized agility in the garden!

Followed by a bickie hunt (in retrospect not the smartest thing to do around an agility course – remember the dreaded tunnel of plenty!!)…

Then some toys and a chill out.

The brightly coloured activity tunnel is a new acquisition. We’d spotted a kiddies ‘potting shed’ tent selling for half price in Home Base and both thought it suited the Biggly Boy right down to the ground. We got as far as the checkout before coming to our senses and realising that our boy can’t read the ‘potting shed’ sign and wouldn’t know the difference between his new toy and a cardboard box. However, we couldn’t go home empty handed so chose the brightly coloured tunnel/den instead. It was very well received and makes a handy addition to our ever-growing set of agility equipment!

Well, I got a great bargain yesterday. A Tesco’s Finest, Free Range, Ready Cooked Chicken for just £1 out of the “Reduced” section.

First we chopped up all the chicken meat to make training treats to die for. And we were rewarded with some exceptionally good behaviour during this morning’s walk:

And some of the usual Beagle naughtiness:

Our two like something to chew on in the evening (or perhaps more accurately WE like them to have something to keep them quiet in the evening). We don’t like them to have too much rawhide and the little strips we give them each day don’t last long. Bones aren’t really an option as they’re likely to lead to squabbles. Most toys just aren’t tough enough for our power chewers. Nyalabones are the safest and most hardwearing, but they tend not to have much appeal…..UNLESS we flavour them.

So, during the afternoon I boiled up the chicken carcass. After a couple of hours of simmering it was clearly cooked to perfection as Beanie and Biggles began to howl and whine to get in the kitchen. I gathered up all their nylabones, gave them a good wash and popped them in the pan with the chicken stock. Beanie and Biggles camped out in the hall by the kitchen door. By the time evening came I fished out a couple of nylabones, cooled them and presented them to our hounds. We had peace for the whole evening. They were so tasty that Biggles chewed clean through his:

Finally, I fished the bones out of the stock and poured the lovely thick, lumpy stock into ice cube trays and froze it. We now have hundreds of tasty little chicken flavoured ice cubes for our puppies to snack on.

Not bad for £1, eh?

As Susan is a member of the Glasgow Dog Training Club committee the whole family was roped in to some degree.  I had been asked to take photographs for the club website and Beanie and Biggles were featuring in the flyball demo which was being provided by their club – Lomond Flyball.

When I’d dropped Susan off at the crack of dawn the sites for the various attractions had been marked out but nothing had been erected. By the time I returned with Beanie and Biggles just a few hours later the change was amazing – stalls selling all things doggy-related had sprung up everywhere, enclosures were fenced off and ready to go and visitors were already starting to gather. There wasn’t much time to admire the transformation though, because the flyball demo was starting shortly and Beanie & Biggles were in it!

Given our two pups’ superb performance in a recent competition, I had been confident that they would play their part well. However, when I heard the music blaring around the main ring, pipe bands, cheerleaders and dogs everywhere  I was beginning to wish that Susan hadn’t said to quite so many people “Make sure you’re there to see Beanie and Biggles in the flyball demo – they’re amazing!”.

My fears proved well grounded as you can see in the following video:

We often joke that Beanie has a faulty nose as she’s often hopeless at finding things. But somehow she sniffed out  bonios in a rucksack from yards away. She remembered her training to a degree and when the time came for her first run she flew over the jumps and headed for the box to release the ball. But at the last moment temptation got the better of her and she sharply veered off to the right and made a bee-line for one of our team mates rucksacks. Club instructor Sarah quickly left her station behind the flyball box, extracted Beanie from the rucksack and prised a couple of bonios out of her mouth.

From that moment onwards, in Beanie’s mind the rules of the game had changed. A flyball run was no longer complete without a trip to the bonio rucksack! The audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy the chaos that followed.

Err.. the ball’s right here!

Little Robbie – one of the few who stayed focused on the ball

But eventually Biggles..

..and even Beanie managed to get it right!

The more advanced dogs followed and showed the spectators how it should be done.

Of course while the other dogs were running, our two weren’t quite finished letting the side down. What’s the most embarrassing thing that your dogs can do when you’re wearing your obedience club polo shirt and there are scores of people watching? How about a noisy round of play fighting while you demonstrate that you clearly have no control whatsoever over your dogs?

Fortunately order was restored fairly quickly.

Naughty? Who me?

After the flyball Susan had to rush off to work on the  ’Dogstacle’ or mini agility stall.  There was a gazebo beside the course so we popped Beanie & Biggles crates in there and settled them down for a nap while I went off to check out the other attractions.

The Dogstacle course was running throughout the afternoon and proved to be very popular – there was a queue at it all day long!

Beagles seemed to be very well represented and we even bumped into Thomas who we’d previously met at Beagle Racing. Here he is having a go at the Dogstacle course:

Sue and Kevin Rose (the couple that host the lure coursing events that Beanie and Biggles enjoy so much) came all the way from Rumbling Bridge to set up a lure coursing run, free for all visitors to try. Obviously there was only room for a short course, but still it was enough to give dogs and owners a taste of how much fun the full thing can be:

This fellow got the idea of chasing the lure straight away

Cuillin was also a natural (Cuillin’s mum plans to take him to the next event at Rumbling Bridge!)

But the best lure chaser I saw was Tess – particularly impressive given that she’s only recently returned to full activity after her spaying op!

The flyball team also set up a have-go course that proved to be very popular. Not all of the newbies managed to return with the ball on their first go, but at least none of them raided any rucksacks!

In the main ring there were presentations by the Greyhound Awareness League and Dog’s Trust:

..and a demonstration of heelwork to music:

This was followed by a series of very popular dog shows (including junior handler, pedigree and crossbreed categories) and finally a doggy fashion parade featuring the latest and greatest from The Pet Stop.

The Dog’s Trust also ran a Doggy Dash competition throughout the afternoon – a short, timed restrained recall with some handsome prizes going to the fastest dog. I fancied Beanie’s chances in this and before the competition closed I prised Susan away from the Dogstacle stall and we gave both Beanie and Biggles a chance at glory. They both ran well and came straight to me but sadly their times just weren’t good enough to claim any prizes – the competition winner was a very cute little 7 month old Tibetan Terrier who shot over the line like a shaggy, fur-covered bullet.

Lining the path between the various have-a-go events were a multitude of stalls. Some were simply aimed at raising awareness about animal issues, while others sold anything and everything from personalized gift cards to hand-drawn portraits and of course a wide range of pet products:

It’s just as well that yellow duck can’t read ;)

The time flew by and at 4pm everything came to a close. If the setting up of the stalls and enclosures had been impressive, the clean up operation was even more so. As the event was closing I took Beanie and Biggles up to the meadow for a nice walk while Susan was helping to pack everything up. I came back within an hour  and everything was gone and the park was left completely spotless. Well, perhaps not completely. One or two rawhide chews had been left on the grass, but fortunately Biggles was able to help with these. Beanie does the giant Bonios in other people’s rucksacks, while my boy takes care of stray rawhides. What a team!

As always, all photos of the event are available here.

Read more about Paws in the Park here.

Here’s Biggles in action at the tender age of 1 year with just one lesson and one practice session under his belt (keep watching to the end – he hangs in there and figures it out in the end!):

Biggles has been coming along to Beanie’s practice sessions since the age of three months. We let him play in tunnels and run over jumps laid on the ground. I think this has helped him to pick things up more quickly.

Here’s Beanie in action. She’s well and truly conquered her deamons when it comes to distance work!