Time for a quick coffee while we brace ourselves for round two :)
Author: Susan
No More Swimming Until January
Beanie was on great form during yesterday’s swimming lesson. She’s been so full of beans that we asked the veterinary nurse to give her a really good work out. She did double laps, resisted laps….you name it. After each lap the nurse always checks her heart rate. She was unable to get more than a very slight increase in Beanie’s very low normal resting pulse rate. She’s a fit little girl!
Now that she’s got her first swimming course under her belt our plan is to cut back. We considered taking her once a fortnight or even once a month just to keep her joints nice and safe and strong. But we’ve decided it will probably do her more good to take about three months off swiming and then to do another concentrated block of lessons in the new year. And if we wait until February Biggles will be old enough to join her :)
Beanie “No Fear”
It was Beanie’s second class in her Introduction to Agility course today and what a performance!
Because of the bad weather it was held in an indoor arena in East Kilbride, so we had about half an hour after completing the 5k to bundle Beanie into the car and get from Bellahouston to East Kilbride. Only Beanie and Islay the Springer Spaniel turned up so they had plenty of individual attention. The class was more demanding this week and they worked on jumps, the open tunnel and the flat tunnel, and even some little combinations of jumps and tunnels. Both dogs did superbly – it was the owners that were struggling to remember all the commands, signals and body language….not to mention the problem of keeping up with our fit, fast young dogs as they hurtle along the course. Agility really is hard work for the handler!
We didn’t expect Beanie to take to agility but after this morning’s performance we can’t help but feel that she’s going to be a little superstar! I have never seen her so excited or so fast! She flew over jumps clearing them by miles, hurtled through tunnels and after each run would sprint a couple of victory laps of the arena and then do the whole course again in reverse on her way back to me! (OK, so the victory laps and reverse run of the course weren’t strictly what she was supposed to do, but Carol informed us that she didn’t view it as naughtiness – just enthusiasm :) ). Beanie has no problem with any of the equipment and handles each new piece of apparatus like a pro first time. In fact, instructor Carol gave her the nickname of “Beanie No Fear”. She gets a little excitable on the wait commands, and often took off down the course before she was told to. And a couple of times she got bored in her ‘wait’ position and took off in search of treats. But Carol says that’s fairly common in young, high energy dogs.
Beanie’s homework is to practice her ‘down wait’.
Mum’s homework is to try not to talk so much – just the commands and nothing else. Apparently my words of encouragement are confusing Beanie. Carol made Paul’s day with that one!