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!

Mats generally don’t survive long in our house as they’re the natural prey of the Beanie monster. That’s why on our latest visit to B&Q I wanted to switch to the hard-wearing, spiky-bristled variety. I figured they wouldn’t feel nice in Beanie’s mouth, so they might not get chewed quite so much. Susan disagreed: “Just get a regular washable mat. We can take it up any time Beanie’s unattended downstairs”. I expressed doubts that we could remember, or even be bothered, to do that day in, day out.

I lost, and we paid £14 for a long, washable fabric mat. We popped it down in the hall when we got back, let Beanie into the garden, and went to check our email. Here’s the sight that greeted me when I returned to investigate some unusual sounds coming from the ground floor..

Still, that bit of a destruction is a sign that Beanie’s throughly back on form. Earlier in the week, we’d felt that she had lost some of her boundless energy and zest for life following a complete switch over to raw food. Her confidence also took a dent on Tuesday when we had our carpets replaced by laminate. The fresh clean laminate surface has already helped to reduce her itching, but for the first couple of days she was a bit like Bambi on ice. There was no jumping on the kitchen table, no running around like a crazy thing. Instead she just sulked on her bed and whined.

Well, that torn up rug is a symbol of her return to healthy, happy naughtiness. And if this morning’s session at the park is anything to go by, the switch back to regular dry food (Burns Active) has completely restored her energy reserves: