We went back to Irvine Beach this morning. The BBC Weather tide tables served us well and we had a fair amount of beach to walk on, decent weather and, most importantly, some great chums for Beanie to play with.

Best of all was Bailey – pictured above – a Boxer pup around about the same age as Beanie. They hit it off straight away, playing chase both on the beach and in the water. While rummaging around just offshore, treasure hunter Bailey made a superb find – a battered milk container. The milk inside wasn’t just “off”, it was mature cheese – a true delicacy, and worthy of further chasing.

For me though, there was one really memorable moment on the walk. It happened when we met Rory, a gorgeous fun-loving retriever:

Rory was clearly very at home in the sea, and with a little coaxing Beanie followed him in and actually swam!

The tennis ball that was used for the coaxing (just visible in the above picture) was lost of course. It turns out that although Rory is a Retriever, he doesn’t. Retrieve that is. And as for Beanie, well it’s a small miracle any time we come back from a walk with an intact tennis ball.

Other points to note from this walk:

1. Ben. He was great chum too, and he had a tennis ball that squeaks.
   
2. Seaweed is damn tasty!
3. Beagles can fly:

Finally here’s a slideshow of more shots from the beach.

Although it was a little overcast we decided to take another trip down to Irvine beach this morning. We got quite a suprise when we arrived – it looked like a different beach and not just because it was gray and drizzly today. The lovely expansive beach that we strolled along last week had shrunk to a fraction of it’s size!

There must be 100m of a difference between the width of the beach at low tide and at high tide!

But the lack of beach (it is still more than three miles long at high tide) didn’t spoil Beanie’s fun any, and despite the rain Paul & I still enjoyed it. But I think the best possible time to go would be a nice sunny day when low tide occurs at about 10 am. According to the BBC Weather Tide Tables the next morning low tide is at least a week away :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/tides/tides.shtml?date=20080729&loc=0411

Yesterday afternoon we met up with Kathleen MacDonald in the park. She didn’t have any of her Beagles with her, but she had the next best thing: Dillon. Beanie and Dillon had a thoroughly good romp around the park for a couple of hours while we chatted.

Afternoons are normally Beanie’s nap time (actually any time that doesn’t involve eating or running around like a maniac is nap time) and I have to say there were moments when Dillon seemed to have exhausted her batteries.

But still, they had a great time together!

While the dogs were playing the conversation naturally wandered onto good places for dog walks. The beaches at Irvine and Troon were mentioned, and this morning we decided to give Irvine a try.

We had taken Beanie to Irvine once before. Unfortunately that visit had been at the weekend, and it was way too busy to risk letting Beanie off lead. This morning however the beach was almost deserted – even though the weather was superb – so we unclipped her lead almost immediately.

She quickly found a friend to play with, and although Beanie’s no slouch when it comes to running, she had trouble keeping up with this long legged athlete.

We must have walked for miles along the beach, just enjoying the sun, sea, and silly puppy antics.

On the way back we ran into a fun loving pointer called Tor…

… and a gentle labrador-staffie cross whose name unfortunately we didn’t get.

We may not have got the dog’s name, but Beanie certainly got a bite of his or her bottom!

Hmmm lip-licking tasty!

If the beach is always so quiet on a weekday morning – and the lab-cross owner indicated that it usually is – you can bet we’ll be going back there pretty soon!