As Beanie gets older our once 100% recall is slipping further and further away. She can still do it perfectly when she’s in the mood, but as her nose and tracking ability develop we’re starting to see why so many Beagle owners advise against ever letting a Beagle off lead!!
Fortunately we can still trust her off lead in the park if there’s a suitable playmate for her. She stays on her extending lead until we bump into a dog / dogs that she wants to play with (usually other pups). If the other dog seems just as keen we explain the situation and ask the owner if their dog would be up for a bit of Beagle style rough play. If the owner is in agreement (and they always are!) the pups get a good long run and play session that normally includes a substantial chunk of wrestling – so good all-round exercise! There’s no risk of her following her nose and wandering into danger, and when she’s playing with other dogs Beanie will happily trot back to us when called.
High energy, a love of chasing and a willingness to engage in a bit of rough-housing are the key ingredients for good playmates for Beanie – and there are always plenty of pups that fit the bill!
But ultimately we want to be able to control Beanie off lead in all situations so we’re still working hard on overcoming her strong tracking instincts.
For quite a while now we’ve been interested in learning to nurture and harness Beanie’s natural tracking instinct rather than trying to supress it. At Wednesday night’s obedience class, head trainer Val kindly lent us a DVD explaining how to get a pup started on tracking. It’s been a huge success so far. Beanie is a complete natural!
We now give her all of her meals in the garden. I leave Beanie indoors and lay a track around the back lawn. The DVD called it laying a scrub track – you simply shuffle your feet as you walk to disturb the grass as much as possible. I started out putting little bits of kibble along the track as the DVD advises, but Beanie didn’t need or want this. Her instinct to follow the track even overpowered her love of food! At the end of the track I pop her dinner out of sight behind a bush. I then bring Beanie out on lead and take her to the start of the track. She doesn’t hessitate – she sprints around the garden following the track EXACTLY and finds her dinner with ease every time. We also lay little tracks whenver we’re out on walks (the ‘prize’ on walks is her favorite ball with a piece of ham stuffed in it – so she gets a snack and a game) and we are finding that Beanie is viewing tracking as a group activity rather than something she does without us.
I’m not sure yet where this will lead us, but she’s so good at it that we’re planning on taking her as far as we possibly can with it. Our hope is that in the process we’ll learn how to get her to listen to us when her nose is down.
We’ve ordered a book from Amazon to give us more ideas for nosework games: