Eeeeww I put my foot in it, Dad!

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Paul

Tonight on our short second walk Beanie got distracted by Biggles and accidentally trod in a particularly revolting piece of the brown stuff. Her reaction was not what I was expecting at all! She shot away from the poo pile and did a couple of little circles holding her smelly paw up all the while, just as she does when she’s got grit between her toes or a thorn in her pad. Her reaction was all “eewww I trod in some poo!” Ordinarily I’d have picked her up and rubbed her paw but this time she was sh*t out of luck, as the saying goes.

Now remember this is the same Beagle that redefines the word disgusting. I’ve seen lots of David Cronenberg films, but on walks her actions still leave me struggling to hold on to the contents of my stomach. If there’s something really vile on the pavement that even I can smell a mile off, she has to stick her nose right in it for a power sniff. If there’s some dog, sheep or cow poo around she’ll eat it. Or roll in it. Or both. But for some reason, tonight our little princess reached her limit and I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course right after that I put my own foot in a juicy turd, which I guess made us even.

Beanie, recovering from her poo trauma

First Attempt at an Agility Course

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Susan

Now that we’ve got our own little set of contact equipment we’ve got everything we need to create propper agility courses. Several months ago Chief the Beagle’s owner, Luisa, sent me some of her course plans (she teaches and judges agility). At last we have the space and equipment to try them out!

We only have 5 jumps (although I’ve ordered another 6 and a tyre jump) so we had to adapt Luisa’s plan a little. Here’s the course that we came up with for yesterday’s practice:

And here’s the video of Beanie and Biggles running the course for the very first time. I was very impressed!

Today I decided to design my own course. I wanted to give them a nice long straight at the start and finish so they could really stretch out and pick up speed, but a little bit of complexity in the middle. Here’s the plan.

And the video of their first attempt at the course.

For the first time since we started doing agility I know what we can and can’t do and what we need to work on!

We’ve found that Beanie and Biggles do best if training sessions are very short (5 – 10 minutes max) and agility practice is very sporadic (perhaps once every three weeks). In between practice sessions we’ll occasionally pop out to work on a little drill for a minute or two. Any more than that seems to be couner-productive (although that might change in future). Yet they always amaze me with their progress from one practice session to the next. I guess a lot of skills from other activities are transferring to agility (and vise-versa).

So, that’s the equipment packed away for two or three weeks – after doing so well I think they deserve a bit of lure-coursing next!

Butterfly stroke over the long jump!