We’ve got lots of good news in connection with the big charity fun run that Beanie’s taking part in later this year!

Beanie has only just started looking for sponsors and has already raised a whopping £79.50 for Beagle Welfare! Everyone is being so generous. You can find out more, or sponsor her yourself online here.

It’s looking like there could be a big turn out of Beagles (and other dogs) on race day! Lots of people have said they are interested in taking part. One or two are a little put off by the thought of running 5k, but the race organizers have stressed that “FUN” is the significant part of the term “fun run”, and that they expect large numbers of people to walk.

The organizers have stressed that you don’t need to officially enter your dog. However, if you want an official number, goodie bag and medal for your Beagle then enter him/her as a concession (£5.50). We’ve entered Beanie as “Miss Beanie The-Beagle” :)

If you do enter with your dog, please send us a photo so that Beanie can publish it on her blog!

Millmar Secret Agent (aka Ty) Enters the Edinburgh Race!

As you know, Beanie is taking part in the Glasgow event on the 4th October. The first confirmed Beagle entry that we have for the Edinburgh race on the 5th October is the lovely Millmar Secret Agent (aka Ty). He’s entered with his whole family so it sounds as if it’s going to be a very exciting day for him. Ty is not only an athlete, but also a fine looking dog with success in the show ring.

Ty demonstrating that posh show Beagles are just as naughty as the rest of them!

If you know Ty, don’t forget to sponsor him!

Charity Dog Run News from Across the Pond

You may have noticed that Harvey & Leila from America posted a comment to an earlier post telling us about some 5k and 10k charity races that are organized specifically for dogs and their people. I noticed from the website that they were planning a race in London in 2009 so I dropped them a line for more info. It turns out that the organizer’s family (Paul Gardner) have their roots in Scotland and has always planned to visit, so he’s very keen to organize a race here. He’s currently working hard on races this year in Norwich VT, Salt Lake City UT, and San Francisco CA but will keep us informed of developments for London and Scotland 2009!

Paul sent us this link to some useful resources and tips for running with your dog.

Beanie will be running a 5k for charity on 4th October in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. (Find out more here).

At the moment it’s easy to keep Beanie fit and healthy. All we need to do is let her off lead in the park with other dogs. But I’ve noticed that once past the puppy stage the dogs tend not to play and run around so much. So we need to start getting Beanie involved in some activities that will keep her active for her whole life. Jogging seems promising. She enjoys it when just one of us take her. She’s in her element when the whole pack goes running together (me, Paul and Beanie). And running in a race with a whole bunch of people…well she can hardly contain her excitement. So I guess there are some parallels between that and running with a pack of hounds during a hunt (which she’s been bred to do).

She’s in pretty good shape and doesn’t need any special training. In fact she runs the equivalent of half a dozen races with her doggy pals each morning in the park! She did a 27 minute 5k at 8.5 months (Paul had planned on walking the course with her, but she had other ideas!) and will be a year old on the day of her next race. If her fitness keeps improving at the rate that it has in the last couple of months my guess is that she’ll be wanting to run at a pace that Paul & I will struggle to keep up with. So when we talk of Beanie’s training for the big race it’s really OUR training – but we plan to involve her as much as possible as this is all about the three of us spending time together.

Looking further ahead, if all goes well and she continues to enjoy running with us we’ll be increasing Beanie’s running distance when she’s older. And we want to make sure that she’s in very good condition so that she can do her preferred activities safely. She’s now 9 months old, so we’ve been introducing a bit of fun conditioning into her life. She has an occasional jogging session with us on grass just to get her used to running on lead, and a fortnightly swimming session at the pets physiotherapy pool to build lots of protective muscle around her joints. We had taken her hill walking a couple of times which she absolutely adored, but when we told the vet this she advised us to hold of on that for another couple of months. I had actually thought that hill walking should be introduced before jogging to build up muscle, but apparantly not! (Although I did describe it to the vet as climbing mountains so maybe she imagined it to be more strenuous than it really was).

Paul and I plan to integrate our training sessions with Beanie’s walks. Left to her own devices she does lots of flat out sprints interspersed with slow jogging or even rests. That would work well for us too, so we plan to get out into some hilly country side and just let her set the pace. And then simply do our best to keep up with her. We’re going to try incorporating some toys – perhaps some kind of fetch game where we’re racing her for the toy. But we’ve never had much success with getting her interested in toys in the past.