Yesterday was a lovely sunny day so we went to Culzean Castle – a National Trust castle and country estate half an hour down the coast from us. It’s a lovely place for dog walks. Not only a castle built right on the cliffs overlooking the sea, but formal gardens, woodlands, a deer farm, a huge swan pond, cliff top walks and lovely beaches and sandy coves.

As always the first thing Biggles did when we arrived on the beach was get his nose down and make a beeline for the nearest horse tracks:

There are horses in the field behind us and we often meet the farmer riding during morning walks or chat with her while she’s grooming the horses. In fact we occasionally walk beside her on horseback. Beanie and Biggles are completely laid back about this. Yet the moment we come across horse tracks on a beach – ANY beach, Biggles goes ballistic and Beanie normally joins in.

We spent about 3 hours walking around the estate. We didn’t do anything particularly energetic but I guess all the different sights, sounds and smells were very stimulating as the Beaglets were knackered when we got home:

Turn the light out mum

It’s Beanie’s third birthday today and Beanie being Beanie she spent the day resting a sore leg!

Beanie and Biggles are entering a fun agility competition at the end of the month so we’ve been taking them for agility lessons to prepare them. They’ve been doing well and this inspired us to make some nice wooden agility jumps for Beanie’s birthday. The wood arrived on Friday and we’ve spent every waking minute since then cutting, sanding, screwing and painting to get them ready in time for a practice session on her birthday. I guess we allowed the beaglets to spend too much time racing around the garden amusing themselves while we were busy – hence the sore leg.

The weather has been lovely recently and as we’ve been so busy building agility jumps we’ve stuck to local walks this week. One of my favorites is the Beach Park which is just a few minutes away. This is even nicer than walking along the beach as it’s quite high up and you get to look down on the sea. It’s also very hilly and great for cross country running. We’re all entered into a couple of cani-x races at the end of this month and Paul and I have also spent some time running here without the dogs in an attempt to get fit.

Another favorite walk is from our front door. A lovely 5 mile country walk through farms, along country roads and cycle tracks. It’s beautiful all year round but I particularly like this time of year.

Anyway, back to the birthday girl. Her main pressie – 8 posh new agility jumps will need to wait for another day. Biggles has had a little go but don’t tell Beanie!

Beanie managed to rally round for her birthday cake. And if I say so myself it was a particularly nice one. At the last minute I realised we had no eggs so I made a tasty lamb meat loaf cake with natural yogurt icing instead. The best bit was that the beaglets got to eat the WHOLE cake for brekkie!

A few more pressies (two of everything – it is of course the Biggly boy’s un-birthday after all):

And finally a little video clip.

And just when we thought all the excitement was over our next door neighbor popped in with a goodie bag full of pressies for the birthday girl and un-birthday boy.

On Sunday we headed to Muirhouse farm (near Hall of Caldwell) for its charity open day. The attractions included a have-a-go agility course, some show jumping and the intriguingly named “horse and hound” competition.

The agility was held in a poorly lit, sand floored barn so I couldn’t get any pictures, but our two Beaglets loved it. They had about five goes each; the first four were on lead but the last round was running free. That last go obviously was the most exciting, I say “obviously” because about half way round Beanie couldn’t contain herself any more and broke away to do a quick victory lap of the barn before returning to Susan to complete the course.  Apart from that little excursion she did great, and Biggles didn’t let the side down either. There was no victory lap from him, but then he didn’t need one; earlier he’d dug down deep into the floor of the barn and uncovered a substantial lump of horse poo. It’s always nice to find horse poo lying around, but when you uncover it via a bit of adhoc opencast mining, it’s even better.

Outside, the initially dull and wet conditions gave way to sun and blue sky just as the show jumping started. Since the riders were mostly youngsters none of the jumps were at any great height, but still it was lovely to see such fine looking horses doing their thing.

Just when we thought the action had finished and we were about to head off, it started up again. This time however, after completing one round on horseback, the riders hurriedly dismounted and went off on a further round on foot accompanied by a dog. Finally we’d found out what the “horse and hound” competition was all about!

Round one – on horseback

Round two – shanks’ pony plus dog

It’s worth noting that these two things – riders on galloping horses and running dogs – are two things almost guaranteed to start a Beagle bayathon, but today our two hounds stayed remarkably quiet. Maybe this long exposure to horses, running dogs and humies has finally desensitized them a bit, though only time will tell. It certainly tired them out though; when we got home they had their tea, clambered onto our sofas and went comatose for several hours.

Two contented sleepy Beagles, two sand-covered sofas, one quiet afternoon!