Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack
Our Beagle adventures
I thought I’d have a quick look on YouTube for clips of Agility Beagles to give Beanie a little bit of inspiration:
I think Agility is going to turn out to be great fun. We’ve been practicing Agility commands since Saturday and Beanie’s picking it up really well. It’s a great activity for really bonding with your Beagle!
Today Beanie completed her first 10 session swimming course at the pet therapy centre and therefore was due a review with the vet. Now this isn’t a normal vet, but rather one that specialises in pet rehabilitation and sports therapy.
The focus of Beanies first 10 week course had been to build foundation skills (i.e. learning to swim) and to build a foundation of strength and fitness that will allow her to SAFELY lead a full and active life as an adult. She has progressed well during her course and everyone has been pleased with her progress. Two months ago she needed a life jacket to swim and was managing perhaps 16 laps of the pool. By last week she was swimming without a life jacket and managing:
This week we just had a little fun session.
At the beginning of the course in July the measurement around the tops of her legs were:
She weighed 9.5 kg
Today she measured:
She weighed 10.2 kg
So she’s muscling up nicely in all the right places!
Beanie was just over 9 months old when she started swimming. We asked the vet what age was best to start Biggles and she said 6 months – after the fast growing stage was over. It’s a little bit costly, but we think well worth it as it gets a pup off to a really good start by ensuring that it’s building adult fitness on strong, stable joints.
So what next for Beanie?
Beanie’s now a year old and has a green light to start really having some fun and trying her hand at some doggy sports.
We hadn’t planned a second swimming course for Beanie. We just wanted her to be able to swim and to develop strong joints ready for when she starts getting seriously involved in doggy sports as an adult. However, Beanie thoroughly enjoys swimming, and we’re so impressed by the staff at the therapy centre and the results that they get that we’ve decided to take Beanie to the next level and see how she gets on.
With so many people hell bent on keeping their dog’s as couch potatoes and spreading daft scare stories and old-wives tales about the perils of exercising your dog, it’s well worth the money just to have the peace of mind of having a highly trained medical expert involved in planning your dog’s training.
We had a chat about this to the vet today and she tells us that they’ll devlop a training program that’s tailored to Beanie and her chosen activities. At this stage it looks as if it’s going to be competing in racing and agility (We know she adores racing, and whilst it’s early days she seemed to really take to agility too). And of course, we also want to make sure she has a nice foundation for daily activities such as crazy high energy romps in the park and jogging and road racing with us. Also, when Biggles is older we’ll all go hill walking together, so in the meantime one of us will probably take Beanie out for a few hill climbs on her own while Biggles does his thing with the other!
But during the course of the conversation she gave us a few little useful tips that others might be interested in.
Firstly, she told us that one of the things we really need to start working on with Beanie is proprioceptive training.
Also, when we told her about the racing she said “Do you give her a good warm-up first as it’s very important from an injury prevention point of view?”. Whilst we always get to the racing early and have a little wander around with her we’ve never specifically set about getting her warmed up. She’s given us a few ideas for Beanie’s pre-race warm up.
A little while back I wrote about how we’d started researching Beanie’s pedigree to find out where she gets her looks and athleticism from.
It all started because of a lady we know in our park that used to breed Beagles many years ago. Right from when Beanie was a tiny pup she’s always told us that she looks exactly like her first Beagle and that she was just one generation removed from a pack Beagle. She told us that Beanie would look right at home in a pack of English pack Beagles.
We traced back down Beanie’s mothers line right back to Eton College Beagles (A pack of working Beagles):
Newlin Kelsey (2001)
Newlin Yazz (1994)
Newlin Nonsense (1990)
Newlin Opium (1983)
Norcis Roxanne At Newlin (1980)
Norcis Hannah (1974)
Korwin Rachel (1972)
Korwin Laura (1969)
Sweet Selina (1965)
Pippa or Lairfad (?)
Rossut Midget
Rossut Fashion (1960)
Rossut Variant (1958)
Virtuoso
Veronesse
Eton College Viper (1951)
Eton College Vigilant (1944)
I looked at pictures of Eton College Beagles and some have a very similar build to Beanie. Yesterday we bumped into our breeder friend in the park and I told her what I’d discovered. Oh she said, Eton College Viper was my little girl’s mum! Talk about a small world. So this little bitch from the 50’s that looks exactly like Beanie was in fact a relative of hers!!! I’m hoping to get a picture tomorrow to see just how similar they look (I’ll post it up as soon as I get it).
We went to vist Eleanor from Norcis Beagles today and I’ve got a picture of Korwin Rachel (1972) and all of the bitches in the line after this. There hasn’t really been much change in the appearance of the Norcis/Newlin Beagles during that time. Hopefully I’ll soon have a photo of Eton college Viper’s daughter from the early 50’s – the daughter of an original working Beagle that supposedly looks just like Beanie.
So it seems that in this particular line the change from working Beagle to the current day look took less than 20 years. Pat Sutton (daughter of Rossut Beagles owners) told me that Rossut Variant (like all the pack beagles) was very different from todays beagles – much smaller, finer boned and with longer legs and a pointier snout. And our breeder friend from the park told us that the Rossut’s imported Beagles from America with shorter legs, stockier bodies and squarer snouts.
So it would seem that the change took place over just a few years. Certainly between 1958 and 1972, and taking no more than 6 generations!!!
We’re quite excited about the idea that we’ve got a traditional pack Beagle (genetically speaking of course). Albeit a pampered, pretty pack Beagle that only knows how to hunt socks and knickers!)