I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that Beanie isn’t like her siblings. In fact, she isn’t really like any Beagles that we meet. Either in looks or in the way she moves. It had been suggested to us that Beanie was a throwback to a English pack Beagle, so we decided to research her pedigree and try and trace right back to her pack Beagle roots.

I’ve started to put together her pedigree in pictures and it was quite astonishing when you see it – she is NOTHING like any of her recent relatives. I’ve got quite a few pictures dating back a few generations and none resemble Beanie in any way.

Beanie with her parents and grandparents

In the picture above she appears to look like her dad (Redcap Renaissance), but when you look at a bigger picture of him you see that the build really is very different. Or is it….? He’s definately much chunkier, but if Beanie had her back legs back a bit like her dad then maybe the shape is the same? (There’s no chance of us getting Beanie to pose like her dad – the picture we’ve got took about half an hour. She only stays still for treats, but the minute you pull out a treat she parks her bum on the floor and refuses to stand :) ). But if she takes after her dad where on earth did she get her super slender frame from? I haven’t managed to get a photo of his dad, Raimax Cracker…does anyone know what he looks like?

Beanie’s dad – Redcap Renaissance

She isn’t like her siblings either. This is a picture of her playing with her sister Bella a few weeks ago.

Beanie and her litter sister Bella (aged 9 months)

Most people think Beanie is tiny, but her looks are deceiving. She is in fact 16 inches at the shoulder, so the maximum height that a Beagle should be. Bella is perhaps a little over 16 inches but a whole 4 KG heavier! (Beanie’s currently 10.2 kg).

Now look how similar she is to these English pack Beagles. The similarity is quite astonishing! She sticks out like a sore thumb amongst a group of show/pet beagles, but she’d look as if she belonged to these packs!

Beanie and some English pack Beagles

We plan to keep researching her pedigree right back to the pack hounds, and perhaps try and arrange a visit to one or two of the hunting Beagle packs to see just how like these dogs Beanie really is.

But I guess this explains where our special little Beagle gets her physical prowess from!

A courier package came really early this morning, so I dived out of bed, threw on some clothes and limped down the stairs as fast as my knackered achilles tendons and dodgy right knee would let me. In my rush I neglected to close the bedroom door and shut the baby gate at the top of the stairs. Beanie shot down the stairs after me and headed straight into the kitchen. At last! Mum and dad had finally realized that doggy breakfast really is an emergency that should be handled the instant a puppy wakes up!

Unfortunately for Beanie, her dreams of an early breakfast were shattered when I shut her in the kitchen to answer the door. Package in hand, I re-opened the kitchen doors and headed back to bed for an extra 40 winks. Beanie eventually followed, hungry and disillusioned.

When it really was breakfast time, it took a fair amount of coaxing to get her out of bed. She wasn’t going to get fooled by a breakfast false alarm twice!

We’ve kept Beanie away from her favorite park over the last week to test if it had a more potent mix of allergens than the others. Unfortunately none of the other parks has quite the same great mix of young, active dogs for Beanie to play with, and when Beanie doesn’t burn off some of her insane energy reserves in a chase, she becomes even naughtier than usual. This week of relative inactivity has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of viable socks and underpants, an acute toilet roll shortage, and several new holes in the garden. It’s not too surprising then that we chose to return to Beanie’s number one park this morning.

We expected a chase to kick off immediately on arrival, but the first half hour or so was dominated by hole inspections and mud eating.

When Beanie finally made an effort to get a chase going…

..it quickly crashed and burned. How frustrating!

They say a Beagle is a big dog in a small dog’s body, and certainly Beanie’s happy to mix it up with much larger dogs. But there are big dogs, and then there are BIG DOGS…

Happily, everything changed when Beanie’s Labradoodle friends Amber and Zack turned up. Just a little bit of play-biting..

..and finally a proper chase was underway!

Things got even better when Kirby and Robbie arrived. There was wrestling and racing aplenty, and when the dogs got too hot there was a nice, cooling mud bath waiting for them.

Robbie graciously made time for a quick photoshoot…

and was keen to hold a hole-digging masterclass for the benefit of the others.

Inevitably all that play took its toll, and Robbie ran out of gas.

Even Beanie was looking a little tired at the end of it. Tired, but very happy to be back in her favorite playground!