Profoundly Well-Behaved

The three of us went to the park as normal yesterday morning. There was a good turnout, with plenty of fit young dogs for Beanie to play with, but she had a particularly good time with her sister Bella.

Bella arrives, ready for a good romp…

…and gets one, courtesy of Beanie!

The Beagle count hit seven: Beanie, Bella, Tess, Tara, Clara, Tanner and Baxter. It would have made eight if Sophie hadn’t been on holiday!

Baxter, Tara and Clara get down to some quality sniffing

Beanie was totally back to her old self, getting involved in chase after chase after chase. She and Bella had a great time with a young Dalmation..

I didn’t catch the Dalmation’s name, but I think that may be because the owner never used it. There’d have been no point as the dog is profoundly deaf. He was very well behaved though – his owner had developed their own form of sign language. Physical touch was sometimes needed to get the dog’s attention when he was preoccupied, but after that it never took more than one clear instruction to get the desired response. I guess that’s one disadvantage of verbal commands – it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of repeating the command, weakening its effect.

Just before we left to grab some not-so-healthy snacks from the park’s Pond Cafe (why is it that we’re so careful over what we feed our dog, and so lax when it comes to ourselves), a young pied-piper turned up with a bag of treats. He clearly hadn’t learned his lesson from last time, and was once again mugged by every dog in the immediate vicinity.

Hang on, there’s food but where’s Beanie? She’s there alright, second Beagle bum from the left!