Beagles Whip A Whippet

Posted on July 13, 2008 by Paul

Beagle racing time again! Today’s turnout was small due to a clash with a dog show in Alva, but happily Beanie’s friend Sophie was there, along with two of her pals: a whippet called Rosie and Mac – a Fox Terrier. A cute little Jack Russell called Titch also joined the gang.

Rosie The Whippet

Rosie getting her first taste of racing

Once the whippet racing was over Sophie lined up with Beanie and Murphy for her first ever race. Sophie’s currently suffering from a phantom pregancy (apparently quite common in unspayed bitches) so she wasn’t in her best shape physically. Nevertheless, Beanie apparently felt threatened by the new competition and resorted to dirty tricks to increase her chances of a win. Just as starters orders were being given she unleashed a silent but deadly “bottom cough”. This noxious naughtiness gave rise to some expletives from the officials but once the air had cleared the race got under way.

Murphy finished first, no doubt spurred on by the desire to stay safely upwind of Beanie’s backfiring bum. Sophie finished last, but she ran the full length of the track without any hiccups – more than Beanie managed in her race debut.

Murphy (1st) and Beanie

The final race had all dogs, including the two terriers Mac and Tich, and Rosie the whippet, running together. I think Rosie thought she was out for a gentle stroll, because she was beaten into fourth place by Murphy, Beanie and little Titch.

You saw it here first – a Beagle beating a whippet!

Training for the big Race

Posted on July 9, 2008 by Susan

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.

Drowned Rat

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Paul

Swimming is just as good for dogs as it is for humans. It exercises muscles in ways that walking and running can’t, and does so without loading the joints. Unfortunately Beagles tend not be keen on entering water – a trait that Beanie shares. She became a little less reticent after the “Pool Party” at the Pets A & E therapy pool, so we decided to give her another, longer swimming session on Tuesday.

She was a little uneasy and splashy at first, but with gentle coaxing from the excellent staff she started to relax. By the end she was confident enough to show an interest in one of the toys.

The session concluded with a quick shower and good rubdown with a towel.

I think some kind of perfumed gel was used for the shower because Beanie smelled unusually fresh as sat in my lap on the way back home. Perhaps that’s the real reason why Beagles aren’t keen on swimming – one session washes away the delicate eau de toilet built up by hours of rolling around in dead frog carcasses and assorted wildlife droppings. Aagh! There’s never a pile of fox poo to hand when you really need it!

The day after her session at the pool I did note that Beanie was quite happy to wade through a stream at her local park, so it seems to have done some good. Maybe another session or two will make her brave enough for a little solo swim in the park’s lake. It would at least enable her to gobble up the bread that the silly two-legged types keep throwing at ducks :)