Author: Paul

No More Death By Pee-Pee?

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A while back I wrote about our new lawn, and how Beanie’s pee is killing it. We didn’t fancy using things like Dog Rocks and Greenum in her water to change the composition of her urine, so we were left with two options:

  • Don’t let Beanie pee on the grass – teach her to pee on the gravel-covered bits instead
  • Failing that, hose down the favorite pee spots with water regularly. This dilutes the urine, turning it into a powerful fertilizer that can actually help the grass grow.

Well, neither of those methods are working. While other dogs apparently like to pee in one particular place, our Beagle prefers to use a new spot every single time. As a result our lawn looks like it’s been shotgunned by acid pellets – lots of dead holes everywhere!

We’ve tried repairs, but as soon as we clear and seed a dead patch, Beanie becomes very interested in it and starts digging.

Behold the face of guilt (with dead grass spots visible in the background)

We’ve been able to protect one or two spots by putting her old crate over them, but we’re losing the war.

Today we did more research into the problem, and returned from our local DIY store with two purchases that might just help us to get our lawn back.

The first is a type of grass seed that is meant to be resistant to the super-concentrated fertilizer in dog urine.

As you can see from the pack, it’s a mixture of perennial ryegrass and red fescue. I’m guessing that grass grown from this kind of seed doesn’t look quite as nice as the stuff used in typical gardening turf because it’s dirt cheap – about £3 a box. That’s fine by me. I’ll take rough-and-ready living grass over rotting debris any day.

The second thing we got – and we happened on it purely by chance – was this:

It’s a pack of six galvanised metal grids, ordinarily meant to be made into a cubic container for rocks and the like. In this case, we’re just going to lay the grids on the ground to protect fresh repairs from digging paws. I think they’re heavy enough and thin enough to be difficult for Beanie to pick up and play with. At the same time, they don’t have any sharp edges so they should be safe for her. So for £6, we can now protect at least six more lawn repairs.

The other thing we’re going to do is refrain from using any lawn fertilizer stuff. It might be the fact that the lawn was heavily fertilized when it was laid that makes it so vulnerable to Beanie’s pee.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Beagle on the beach

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Yesterday afternoon we met up with Kathleen MacDonald in the park. She didn’t have any of her Beagles with her, but she had the next best thing: Dillon. Beanie and Dillon had a thoroughly good romp around the park for a couple of hours while we chatted.

Afternoons are normally Beanie’s nap time (actually any time that doesn’t involve eating or running around like a maniac is nap time) and I have to say there were moments when Dillon seemed to have exhausted her batteries.

But still, they had a great time together!

While the dogs were playing the conversation naturally wandered onto good places for dog walks. The beaches at Irvine and Troon were mentioned, and this morning we decided to give Irvine a try.

We had taken Beanie to Irvine once before. Unfortunately that visit had been at the weekend, and it was way too busy to risk letting Beanie off lead. This morning however the beach was almost deserted – even though the weather was superb – so we unclipped her lead almost immediately.

She quickly found a friend to play with, and although Beanie’s no slouch when it comes to running, she had trouble keeping up with this long legged athlete.

We must have walked for miles along the beach, just enjoying the sun, sea, and silly puppy antics.

On the way back we ran into a fun loving pointer called Tor…

… and a gentle labrador-staffie cross whose name unfortunately we didn’t get.

We may not have got the dog’s name, but Beanie certainly got a bite of his or her bottom!

Hmmm lip-licking tasty!

If the beach is always so quiet on a weekday morning – and the lab-cross owner indicated that it usually is – you can bet we’ll be going back there pretty soon!

Ballistic Swimming

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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!