Beanie’s itching has been better since we switched her to WafCol low allergy puppy food. Or more precisely, the redness and skin infections on her tummy have cleared up – the itching itself was never a big worry as it’s quite mild and doesn’t distress her. We were hopefull that after a few more weeks on WafCol the itching would dissapear completely.

But we got a phone call from the vet this afternoon with the results from the first round of blood tests. Beanie has tested positive for indoor allergies and possibly for tree pollen too. We now have to wait another 10 days or so for the next round of tests which will tell us precisely what she’s allergic to.

It’s a big worry as allergies are rare in puppies. And beanie was showing the very first signs at about three months old (very mild itching that the vet dismissed as ‘puppy dandruff’ at the time). From what I’ve read the typical pattern is for a dog to develop allergies at around 2 years and get worse each year after that. So it seems logical that if a puppy develops allergies very young it’s likely to be a serious problem later?

It seems likely that house dust mites are at least part of the problem. Our house is the cleanest it’s ever been. We’ve taken down all the curtains and plan to replace the carpets with laminate flooring (we’ll just wait for confirmation that she is allergic to house dust mites first though!). We’re going to keep her out of the bedroom and at night move her crate to just outside our bedroom door – hopefully that’s enough.

I’ve found some sources that say Allergies are a common problem in Beagles. If anyone has a Beagle with allergies – especially if it developed them as a young pup – please get in touch and let us know what’s worked for you.

Beanie’s growing up fast. At ten months old she’s already got activity levels that are hard for us to keep up with. In a couple of months she’ll get the green light to really ramp up her exercise. But what on earth are we going to find for her to do?

We have some great parks nearby, but already she’s running, sprinting and jumping for perhaps 1.5 – 2 hours solid every morning and not tiring. She always gets a second 1 to 1.5 hour long walk in the evening.

She’s due to start agility in a couple of months time, but we have a sneaky feeling that our little pup might be intent on finding the quickest route from A to B and won’t see the point in climbing all over those daft obstacles when she can go straight through them!! :) She does Beagle racing which is perfect for her – her instincts tell her what she has to do. But agility doesn’t seem right somehow.

We want to give her the opportunity to really fulfill her potential and I’m beginning to think the best way to do that is to let her do what she was orginally bred to do…hunt. What can be more fulfilling to a beagle?

I can’t find anywhere local that organises this kind of thing so I’ve been looking further afield for information that might help us get started.

I’ve looked at a lot of the websites belonging to packs of working Beagles and it really does seem that these dogs have a fantastic life. Nowadays they don’t chase hare, but instead follow an aniseed scent layed down by a runner with a rag soaked in a mixture of cooking oil and aniseed.

http://www.airedalebeagles.com/beagles.html

I just know Beanie would love to run with them. I contacted a few to see if they know of any groups that organise this kind of thing for pet dogs but they weren’t able to help. (I got the impression that they weren’t keen on the idea of Beagles being kept as pets).

Then I stumbled across the Beagle Club who have a working section.

http://www.thebeagleclub.org/working%20section.htm

They have a good description of drag hunting and also tips for training your hound on their website. They organise a number of drag hunts down South. They tell me that Beanie is very welcome to join them if we’re ever in that part of the country.

Is anyone else interested in trying drag hunting with their Beagle? We could get together and find somewhere nice and safe to start training our dogs. I’m sure we could get some tips from experienced people down South, and once we’ve got our dogs trained perhaps we could all make a little trip to the South of England to let our hounds join a real hunt?

Please get in touch if you’re interested in trying this!!

And if you’ve got experience of this we’d love to hear from you! I know some people (including Paul) are a little concerned that if you teach a Beagle to track you might have trouble with recall. But I’ve heard lots of dog experts say that it’s important for your dog’s self-esteem to let it work – do the things that it was bred to do. They claim that this will often solve problems because you’re channeling your dog’s instincts.