If oil is “Black Gold” then tomato ketchup deserves to be known as red gold for its ability to neutralize the unique and overpowering odor of fox poo.

Beanie’s rolled in fox poo several times now, and while standard puppy shampoo can get her looking clean afterwards, it doesn’t do much to make her smell clean. A fellow dog walker suggested we try cleaning her with tomato ketchup, so after our most recent visit to Pollock Park I ended up standing under the shower with a foul smelling Beagle and a bottle of Heinz’s best. It worked amazingly well, though I’d recommend spending extra time on the final rinse if you don’t want a trail of red paw prints on the carpet!

When Beanie’s not rolling in fox poo, digging up the garden, leaping onto the kitchen table or humping the nearest human limb, there’s nothing she likes more than shredding a toilet roll. The one good thing about this is that she’s decided that bog roll hunting is best done when the toilet isn’t occupied, so at least you don’t have to go chasing after her with your pants round your ankles. On the other hand, it takes quite a while to clean up after a full roll has been given the Beanie treatment. It’s nothing like the Andrex puppy adverts I can tell you. And if you actually manage to stop the little rascal before she’s made much of a mess, she looks quite indignant!

How come you always know when I’ve been naughty?

As well as tussling with her siblings, Beanie had a good long wrestling session with Lucy, aka Always and Forever from the Jalhar kennels. They’d traveled all the way from Staffordshire in England to be at the competition, and two of their young handlers kindly shared their knowledge with us over a coffee.

When Lucy was dragged away to the show ring, Rhiannon (below) somehow managed to instill some discipline into our little hooligan, while her older sister Rebecca gave us a fascinating insight into the world of dog shows.

In truth we had such a good time talking to the all the other Beagle lovers that we didn’t really see much of the competition itself! There are further Beagle gatherings later in the year, including a barbecue sometime in the summer. On top of that, Liz of Newlin Beagles  said she may be organizing some informal walks via her website. Judging from the enthusiasm on show today,  I think they’ll be a great success.

We went along to the Scottish Beagle Club Championships in Lanark today, mainly to meet up with Dudley – one of Beanie’s brothers – and his owners. We were both looking forward to meeting Dudley, but we were expecting the actual show to be a rather formal affair, like a miniature Crufts. Happily, this was not the case! Spectators were free to mingle and chat to contestants, and it was as much a social gathering for Beagle fans as it was a serious competition.

Almost immediately on arrival we met up with David and Liz of Newlin Beagles, and we learned that in addition to Dudley, two of Beanie’s sisters – Zoe and Peanut – were there, along with Ginger (aka Yanis) who was from a slightly older Newlin litter.

Dudley (giving a paw) and Ginger

From the left: Peanut, Zoe, Beanie & Dudley

You’ll notice that “handlers” are present in the above picture of the four pups. This was very necessary, as without restraint the meeting had a tendency to dissolve into .. er .. this:

Seeing them playing there, it’s hard to believe this is how they started out:

Prior to the get-together, I’d wondered if our houndlets would remember each other from their time in the Newlin puppy pile. If they did, it wasn’t immediately obvious. They loved each other’s company, but apparently no more than any of the other pups in the hall. In fact all the Beagles seemed to get on well together. With so many different ages and bloodlines represented you might have expected some disagreements to break out, but I didn’t see any at all. Maybe that’s another indication that the Beagle thoroughly deserves its reputation as a “merry little hound”.