We had unexpectedly nice weather this morning, which made for a very nice walk in the park. Admittedly wellies were still required, but there was sun, blue sky and thankfully no midges.

Beanie got straight down to her usual antics with her chums Sophie and Kirby.

Yep, Beanie regularly wrestles with Grizzly bears :)

When Kirby wasn’t looking, Beanie grabbed her squeaky “Daily Growl” newspaper toy and ran off with it:

Needless to say there was much chasing and romping about, but then right out of the blue we saw a young male Beagle approaching. He ran straight over to Beanie and the gang as though he knew them. There was certainly something familiar about his face, but I couldn’t put a name to him – until that is his owner jogged into view and solved the mystery – it was Alfie from Beanie’s obedience class.

The last time we’d seen Alfie was at the Beagle Racing Fun Day. He’d still seemed small and very young back then, but here he was, nine months old and as big as Baxter. His dad was bravely attempting the Holy Grail of activities for the fit dog owner: running with your dog off-lead. I’ve tried this a couple of times with Beanie. While it works, it’s great – your dog can zoom ahead when he/she finds the human pace too pedestrian, or even stop for a sniff with other dogs before playing catch-up for a treat. But it can go wrong all too easily, especially with a Beagle – all it takes is a tempting pile of fox poo to roll in, another dog with an unguarded ball, or worst of all, a picnicker.

Alfie and his dad hung around with us for a while. This gave Beanie an opportunity for further chasing..

..and Alfie got a chance to observe our master wrestler at work. Although in this case, I don’t think the masterclass went quite as Beanie intended!

See Alfie? I’ve got him right where I want him..

After a while they headed off for another circuit of the park, and we were still there when they came round for the second time. Susan asked Alfie’s dad how the run had worked out, but unfortunately his dream of naughtiness-free jogging had turned sour. Maybe it is possible though, even with a Beagle. Earlier in the year we met a guy with a male Beagle who claimed to have no recall problems whatsoever, which he attributed to running with his dog off-lead from an early age. Hmm.. think I’d need to see it to believe it!

Anyway it was time to head home, which we did, albeit after a quick hot chocolate at the park cafe. On our way to the car, we ran into the long time Beagle owner who’s given us such interesting information on Beanie’s ancestry. She doesn’t have a Beagle these days, instead she has a Spaniel called Toby, but he seems keen to carry on some of the habits of his Beagle predecessors. He’s independent, only responds to commands when he wants, and can typically be found circling a tree, barking at the squirrels therein:

While Susan was talking to his owner, I headed down towards Toby to see what all the fuss was about. He was having a great time running round and round the tree, barking with such regularity you could use him as a metronome. I knelt to take a few photos of him, expecting my presence to disturb him, but he was oblivious. He just kept on with his perfectly timed, monotonous barking. It started to remind me of a psychological method of attack sometimes employed by the military to wear down the enemy – playing loud music over and over again.

Maybe I was right to make that association, because suddenly a squirrel darted down the tree trunk and made a near-suicidal dash across the park. Toby was instantly on the chase!

He came quite close to catching the little fella – he certainly had enough straight-line speed..

..but the squirrel was more agile, and made it to another tree before Toby could have him for lunch. Toby had a couple of goes at climbing the tree, then returned to his tried and tested methods: circling and barking. He was still there as we left the park…

Way back when we knew we were getting Beanie, we bought her a toy to play with in her last week or so at Newlin Beagles. This wasn’t purely indulgence – as we’d handled the toy before Benaie got it we hoped it would help familiarize her with our scent, and when she came to our home it would bring the comforting scent of her littermates with her. Now that Biggles is going to be joining us, we headed off to Pets at Home to do the same for him.

We settled on a rope ring with four textured balls on it – it looked to be fairly robust, and the different textures should make for an engrossing chewing experience. Unfortunately we had no idea just how engrossing.

Once back home, we handed the toy to Beanie to get her scent on it. It was an immediate hit, and got Beanie’s full attention.

The chewing quickly grew more intense..

.. and after taking a couple of photos I made a mental note to rescue the toy fairly soon, just in case it couldn’t stand up to a prolonged Beanie session. After all, not many things can. Unfortunately I left the toy in Beanie’s clutches just a little too long, and Susan found a trail of debris on the landing ten minutes later.

So one more visit to the pet shop was on the cards. This time we got a simpler, and surely more robust chew/tug toy:

Rhino – sounds just the thing for a tough little Beagle boy doesn’t it? Beanie’s jaws of death didn’t get hold of it this time – we just handled it a bit and sent it straight off to Biggles. But another toy caught Susan’s eye – a treat jar on a rope. This one would be solely for Beanie – it is her Birthday soon after all!

The bottom of the jar unscrews for loading, and it has lots of air holes to allow the smell of the treats to escape. The dog has his work cut out to get extract the treats though. He has to push the knotted rope down into the jar a little (otherwise the knot blocks the jar’s neck), and jiggle the treats down to towards the neck end by tilting the lower end up. I honestly didn’t think Beanie would be up to the task – that one brain cell of hers usually only comes up with a single strategy: brute force. Can’t open the baby gate into our office? Just chew your way through. Can’t open a jacket pocket to extract some week-old treat debris? Chew the jacket! You get the picture.

And yet, to my amazement, she’s become quite expert with this toy.

Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that it’s showing no sign of damage even after two days of full-on abuse.

I’m hoping that something else will survive Beanie’s attention. To help Biggles cope with our new laminate floor we’ve bought a set of black interlocking rubber mats – kind of like the ones you find in gyms – only way cheaper and therefore not as robust. So far Beanie hasn’t shown any signs of wanting to chew it, and she can run on it without any skidding, so if it lasts the week we’ll get a bit more to make some slip-free play areas for the two of them.

Sheriff’s Mum just sent us some more pics of Biggles! Apparently he’s the most adventurous pup in the litter, often letting his curiosity get him into trouble. That’s exactly what we want (gluttons for punishment!) – and it sounds just like Beanie – her breeder Liz described her as the escape artist of her litter.

Playing with a cat toy

On his feet and ready for naughtiness

Caged! But for how long?