A while back I wrote about our new lawn, and how Beanie’s pee is killing it. We didn’t fancy using things like Dog Rocks and Greenum in her water to change the composition of her urine, so we were left with two options:

• Don’t let Beanie pee on the grass – teach her to pee on the gravel-covered bits instead
• Failing that, hose down the favorite pee spots with water regularly. This dilutes the urine, turning it into a powerful fertilizer that can actually help the grass grow.

Well, neither of those methods are working. While other dogs apparently like to pee in one particular place, our Beagle prefers to use a new spot every single time. As a result our lawn looks like it’s been shotgunned by acid pellets – lots of dead holes everywhere!

We’ve tried repairs, but as soon as we clear and seed a dead patch, Beanie becomes very interested in it and starts digging.

Behold the face of guilt (with dead grass spots visible in the background)

We’ve been able to protect one or two spots by putting her old crate over them, but we’re losing the war.

Today we did more research into the problem, and returned from our local DIY store with two purchases that might just help us to get our lawn back.

The first is a type of grass seed that is meant to be resistant to the super-concentrated fertilizer in dog urine.

As you can see from the pack, it’s a mixture of perennial ryegrass and red fescue. I’m guessing that grass grown from this kind of seed doesn’t look quite as nice as the stuff used in typical gardening turf because it’s dirt cheap – about £3 a box. That’s fine by me. I’ll take rough-and-ready living grass over rotting debris any day.

The second thing we got – and we happened on it purely by chance – was this:

It’s a pack of six galvanised metal grids, ordinarily meant to be made into a cubic container for rocks and the like. In this case, we’re just going to lay the grids on the ground to protect fresh repairs from digging paws. I think they’re heavy enough and thin enough to be difficult for Beanie to pick up and play with. At the same time, they don’t have any sharp edges so they should be safe for her. So for £6, we can now protect at least six more lawn repairs.

The other thing we’re going to do is refrain from using any lawn fertilizer stuff. It might be the fact that the lawn was heavily fertilized when it was laid that makes it so vulnerable to Beanie’s pee.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

OK, it’s VERY early to be breaking the news, but we’re quite excited :)

We’ve always planned to have a second Beagle as Beanie just loves company so much. We’d considered a rescue, but more recently we’ve felt that it would work out better if we introduced a new pup to the family when Beanie’s around 18 months old. She’s a little tom boy and tends to get on better with boys, so we think it needs to be a baby brother.

The other day I got in touch with Liz from Newlin Beagles (where we got Beanie) and asked her to put us on her waiting list for a little boy sometime after April.

Apparantly she’s hoping to mate Newlin Waffle and Newlin Sailor in February. Newlin Waffle is Beanie’s half sister (Newlin Kelsey was mum to both of them), and Newlin Sailor is apparantly a fit, agile boy. So Biggles (yep, our little boy has been named before he’s even conceved!) should be able to keep up with our little athlete.

Everyone that knows Beanie is probably aware that her once perfect recall started taking a nose-dive at around 5 months old. For about a month we could hardly let her off-lead at all. She improved a little and for a couple of months we’ve been managing fine if we only let her off-lead when there are other dogs to play with.

I’m pleased to say that all this week Paul has been managing to let her off-lead the moment he enters the park. I joined them in their morning walk today and I have to agree she’s as good as gold! She mostly comes when she’s called, and always stays close.

It’s hard to say what has resulted in the improvement. It could be just her age, but there are one or two things that I think have played a part.

1. Paul has been doing the morning off-lead walks alone. He stays much calmer than me when Beanie plays up, and simply walks away from her when she doesn’t come when called. We both felt that she was playing up more when I was with them.
2. We’ve been working on the ‘Natural Training’ exercises that Paul described here
3. I’ve been taking her for long walks every evening on the lead. Part of the walk she has to walk nicely to heel, and the other part she gets to have a good sniff around on her extending lead. I’ve been working on recall then when I can enforce it.

Does my Bum Look Big in This ?

A couple of weeks ago we’d been to a Beagle Club event and all the Beagle owners we spoke to told us (nicely) that they thought Beanie was a bit too skinny. Our vet had always said she was in perfect shape, and we thought she looked good. We paid the vet a visit and the assured us things were fine. We hadn’t intended to feed her any more, but it’s been in the back of my mind and I’ve just been slipping a tiny bit of extra food in her dish at each meal. She’s definately fattened up a little bit and I think looks better for it.

I don’t doubt what the vet said about her being very healthy at the weight she was. From what I’ve read current thinking seems to be to keep pups nice and lean so that they develop slowly. Apparantly (according to some sources) this keeps them healthier as adults. It’s certainly true of kids, so it makes sense that it would apply to dogs too.

But I think the vet would be happy that Beanie is still nice and lean, but she’s got a little more flesh on her bones. So hopefully we’ve struck a happy medium :)