A Baby Brother for Beanie

Posted on July 24, 2008 by Susan

OK, it’s VERY early to be breaking the news, but we’re quite excited :)

We’ve always planned to have a second Beagle as Beanie just loves company so much. We’d considered a rescue, but more recently we’ve felt that it would work out better if we introduced a new pup to the family when Beanie’s around 18 months old. She’s a little tom boy and tends to get on better with boys, so we think it needs to be a baby brother.

The other day I got in touch with Liz from Newlin Beagles (where we got Beanie) and asked her to put us on her waiting list for a little boy sometime after April.

Apparantly she’s hoping to mate Newlin Waffle and Newlin Sailor in February. Newlin Waffle is Beanie’s half sister (Newlin Kelsey was mum to both of them), and Newlin Sailor is apparantly a fit, agile boy. So Biggles (yep, our little boy has been named before he’s even conceved!) should be able to keep up with our little athlete.

Ballistic Swimming

Posted on July 24, 2008 by Paul

Beanie has had her first “real” swim at the park! It’s not the best of photos (heavy tree cover) but here’s the moment she took the plunge:

It’s a landmark moment for our pup, and proof that those swimming lessons have done some good. Admittedly the fact that it was a really hot morning probably helped too – she waded right into the cool water and swam without any prompting from us. We’ve booked another lesson for her next week to keep up the momentum, and I’m very hopeful that she’ll become a regular swimmer in the pond and streams at the park.

So it looks like we’re well on the way to conquering our Beagle’s inherent dislike for water. The other Beagle-ism I’ve been trying to break is her total disinterest in playing fetch. For a long time she would run after the ball/stick/frisbee/whatever only in response to competition from other dogs. I have perservered though, trying short fetch games in the garden whenever she seemed receptive.

Dog walkers in one of our local parks seem to have an addiction to those ballistic ball throwing thingies. Being naturally stubborn (I’m from Yorkshire) , I’ve been determined to resist this flexible plastic virus, but I have noted that lately Beanie has shown much more interest in balls whenever they’re in use. Well, last night we succumbed:

Damn you Tesco, damn you and your cheap pet products!

It only cost £1 from our local Tesco. It came with a poor quality orange tennis ball, and as I picked it off the shelf I said to Susan “that’ll last five minutes”. I was wrong, because in fact it lasted just 3 minutes.

Our little Olympian chewer Beanie was the first to puncture it’s delicate orange epidermis.

Hmm, I’m sure that ball was spherical a moment ago

It was all downhill from there, of course.

Penny and Sophie finish it off with a tug of war

Still, it does enable you to throw much faster and further, and I think it could help us to break the Beagle Fetch Taboo. It’ll get another outing this afternoon, albeit with a more robust ball!

We Have Recall Again!!

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Susan

Everyone that knows Beanie is probably aware that her once perfect recall started taking a nose-dive at around 5 months old. For about a month we could hardly let her off-lead at all. She improved a little and for a couple of months we’ve been managing fine if we only let her off-lead when there are other dogs to play with.

I’m pleased to say that all this week Paul has been managing to let her off-lead the moment he enters the park. I joined them in their morning walk today and I have to agree she’s as good as gold! She mostly comes when she’s called, and always stays close.

It’s hard to say what has resulted in the improvement. It could be just her age, but there are one or two things that I think have played a part.

Paul has been doing the morning off-lead walks alone. He stays much calmer than me when Beanie plays up, and simply walks away from her when she doesn’t come when called. We both felt that she was playing up more when I was with them.
We’ve been working on the ‘Natural Training’ exercises that Paul described here
I’ve been taking her for long walks every evening on the lead. Part of the walk she has to walk nicely to heel, and the other part she gets to have a good sniff around on her extending lead. I’ve been working on recall then when I can enforce it.

Does my Bum Look Big in This ?

A couple of weeks ago we’d been to a Beagle Club event and all the Beagle owners we spoke to told us (nicely) that they thought Beanie was a bit too skinny. Our vet had always said she was in perfect shape, and we thought she looked good. We paid the vet a visit and the assured us things were fine. We hadn’t intended to feed her any more, but it’s been in the back of my mind and I’ve just been slipping a tiny bit of extra food in her dish at each meal. She’s definately fattened up a little bit and I think looks better for it.

I don’t doubt what the vet said about her being very healthy at the weight she was. From what I’ve read current thinking seems to be to keep pups nice and lean so that they develop slowly. Apparantly (according to some sources) this keeps them healthier as adults. It’s certainly true of kids, so it makes sense that it would apply to dogs too.

But I think the vet would be happy that Beanie is still nice and lean, but she’s got a little more flesh on her bones. So hopefully we’ve struck a happy medium :)