More Beagle Racing

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Susan

We headed up early as usual so that Beanie and Biggles could get their private races while it was nice and quiet. Unfortunately Beanie’s favorite lure-meister Scooby wasn’t there. That left us with some serious time to kill until the official races were over and private runs could take place. Happily this passed really quickly because we bumped into a little Beagle boy called Breac and his owners.

We swapped stories about Beagle naughtiness and found out that Breac has his own blog too:

http://breacthebeagle.blogspot.com/

Maggie soon arrived and broke the good news that the experienced dogs would be racing separately from the inexperienced dogs. This was a very welcome attempt to address the problems of unruly dogs in previous weeks. In light of this we decided we’d let Beanie and Biggles enter the official races. After all, there was no guarantee there’d be time for them to get private races at the end.

A few newbie racers had arrived and they were ‘schooled’ before racing got underway. All did very well and were extremely well behaved. They all earned their place in the main races.

The Dog Trophy race was scheduled for this week and our little Biggles romped in a close second beating last year’s champion! Not bad for a little 11 month old boy! He got a few nice compliments from the race officials – he was running beautifully and shaping up very nicely indeed. Murphy won the race despite the fact that he had only recently recovered from a leg injury and wasn’t at his peak of fitness. Here he is with proud mum Carolyn and yet another trophy for his ever growing collection.

Then the rest of the racing got underway. However, all dogs were racing together as normal. Dogs that had caused problems in the past weren’t kept separate. The draw was made and in Beanie’s first heat she was unfortunately drawn against the dog that harassed her and made her afraid to run last time. The dog in question meant no harm of course – he was just being overly playful but his advances were definitely not wanted by the other dogs and it was not appropriate to put him on an enclosed race-track with other, well trained dogs until he’d learned to chase the lure instead of other dogs. I discretely asked if Beanie could go into a different heat (after all this was only a fun race), but that wasn’t allowed. She had to either race this dog or withdraw completely. We withdrew, and the race proved it was the right call as the playful dog lost interest in the lure and chased one of the the other racers all over the track. He was subsequently disqualified. Clearly we’d been wise to keep Beanie out of the race but it meant a long wait for her. She was desperate to chase the lure and was getting more and more frustrated as she watched one race after another. In restrospect we should have called it a day at that point.

As for Biggles, he won his first two heats convincingly and qualified for the final!

Sadly it wasn’t plain sailing though – in his second heat a larger dog cut across three lanes and ‘body-slammed’ him two or three times. Biggles snarled at the dog but kept going. He was not happy. He’s only 11 months old and we don’t want him exposed to this kind of thing – and we most definitely don’t want him to learn he has to be aggressive towards other dogs!! We decided to withdraw him too. The offending dog was disqualified, but that didn’t help Biggles any – the harm was already done. I must stress that efforts were being made to solve the problems and I’m sure things will settle down in due course, but too late for our two. They seem to have born the brunt of so much this season. They are young, small and fast and this seems to cause other dogs to home in on them. Their welfare has to come before a daft race!

We didn’t let this spoil our day though. There was still an opportunity for Beanie and Biggles to run together after racing was over. This would help blot out any bad experiences on the track. They had two or three great runs. Then race organizer Graham asked if they’d like to help school one of the new dogs by running with it. It had proven itself to be a well behaved dog – and fast too. We jumped at it – and Beanie and Biggles thoroughly enjoyed it. The new dog did extremely well.

As usual we’d taken up our portable agility equipment and by the time we’d finished Beanie and Biggles’ fun runs there were quite a few Beagles eagerly waiting for a go. In fact they’d already got the enclosure erected. We all worked together to get the course up quickly and each and every one of the Beagles dazzled us with their jumping ability!

Click here to see more shots from Sunday.

Off-lead Control – The Saga Continues…

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Susan

When you own Beagles a big part of your life tends to focus on how to keep your dogs safe and close whilst still getting the off-lead exercise that they need to thrive. With our two it really is a full time job!

We’re quite proud of the fact that we have a reliable emergency recall which is powerful enough to pull them off a scent. However, if we use it routinely to keep them close to us it looses it’s power as they begin to associate it with curtailing of fun adventures. This has happened in the past with more casual recall commands such as ‘come’. Trainers frequently advise not to use ‘come’ to do something unpleasant to your dog – that makes sense. But what’s the point in training a recall command if your dog stops responding if you expect him to break off doing something it likes more than once in a blue moon? Clearly we need to make our dogs want to stay close rather than relying on recall all the time. But earlier attempts at being more exciting than the environment often proved disastrous.

In agility classes Beanie’s teacher had given me a few excellent tips that really kept Beanie’s attention on me during classes. She has a Parsons Terrier (another tricky breed) that she’s trained to a high level in agility, so she’s no stranger to working with hard-to-train breeds. Her approach has some subtle variations from typical rewards-based training but these make all the difference with dogs that have been bred to work independently from their owners (read that as dogs that bugger off and do their own thing no matter how hard you work at keeping their attention). It’s astonishing how easily you can turn an apparently obstinate, stubborn, strong-willed, independent beagle into an eager to please velcro dog! So we asked her if she had any ideas that might help us whilst out in the park. She agreed to help and is confident that we can have excellent off-lead control of our dogs with a bit of work.

One exercise that she gave us was to go out into the garden with a few treats and just walk around ignoring the dog. Eventually the dog comes over to see what you’re doing and gets a treat. You keep ignoring, walking, changing direction frequently and rewarding the dog for staying close. Gradually you build up lots of tricks into the routine and make the dogs work harder for each treat – so a bit like a cross between a walk and a heelwork to music routine without the music! We also throw in some games of ‘fetch’ to help ensure that they’re getting enough exercise. The subtle but important difference is that you completely ignore the dog until it starts offering behaviors – and then you give it ‘work’ to do. I’m not sure why it works so well, but if we try and get our dogs’ attention they’ll invariably choose to ignore us. But if we ignore them then they are absolutely DESPARATE to do things for us!

As the dogs get more and more attentive the idea is to start taking the routine out to safe, quiet areas of the park. Over time we build in more distractions and field test it in lots of new places.

We’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now and have progressed to the dog enclosure at one of our local parks. We also practice the drill pretty much everywhere we go, but with the dogs on a training line. Once we get started (which I have to admit can take a bit of effort with Biggles who’s going through a difficult stage!) we can spend a whole hour in the park enjoying our dogs undivided attention. About 20 minutes of that time is spent doing the drill described. First with the dogs working individually, then with the dogs off-lead together but each working with their own handler. Then we let both off-lead together for 10 minutes but still doing the drill with just one of us. Biggles would still quite like to play chases with Beanie and ignore us but she’s having none of it. With practice Biggles will be equally attentive. But in the meantime, without Beanie’s cooperation he settles for giving us his undivided attention. I guess we’re better than nothing! Finally we clip on the leads and take the dogs for a long walk around the park. They walk on a loose lead the whole time watching us constantly. We throw in the odd trick as we walk – which they thoroughly enjoy!

Here are some little clips showing some of the tricks that they’ve been practicing during our walks. They’re learning fast!

First Beanie:

Then Biggles:

If it’s dry tomorrow we’ll video our actual training session at the park so we can build up a record of their progress. For a chanage I’ll try and wear something that’s not full of holes!

Stuck under a tree in a bog with an owl

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Paul

On Saturday – the last decent weather day before the rain started – we headed out to Loch Achray. Susan had stumbled on a little website with a nice 1.5 – 2hr walk around the loch and the surrounding woodland. It sounded ideal.

The walk starts out at the friendly Byre Inn (FK17 8HZ), heads up a farm road and then supposedly follows an old, sometimes narrow path through the woods to an observation point before returning along the edge of the loch. Unfortunately the site must be some years out of date because we couldn’t find any trace of the path we were meant to follow. It’s shown on current OS maps and is even present on the maps in my mobile phone, but it just ain’t there any more.

Somewhat disheartened by this early set back, we went back to the Byre Inn for an early lunch and a chance to work out our own route. I don’t know if the Inn is truly dog-friendly, but it does have outdoor seating which is good enough on a dry day. I’m happy to say that both our two hooligans were quite well behaved, though one or two cyclists did earn a stern woofing from Biggles. I didn’t really mind that – I’m not particularly fond of cyclists and if I were a little teenage Beagle boy I reckon I’d woof at ’em as well.

Anyway, by the time we’d eaten our nosh and Beanie and Biggles had dispatched their rawhide chews, we had a new route to follow. This is what we came up with, using cycle paths which are for the most part in pretty good shape:

So suitably refreshed we set off back down the farm track and rather than going left to do the woodland section, we carried straight on along the loch.

Here’s a panorama taken at the edge of the loch. You can see Ben A’an around the mid-point of the picture – that’ll be our next walk when the weather turns good again.

Click to view in a larger size

All too soon we left the loch behind us and headed into woodland, but there were still some fine views to be had:

A little more than half way through we came fairly close to the observation point advertised on the original walk. A narrow path would supposedly lead us off the cycle path and straight to it. Looking carefully around we did see what may have been the remains of an old path – it was badly overgrown, but it looked like we could follow it. And so we did.

It was not at all easy going – a machete would have come in very handy at times. After a few minutes the “path” kind of disappeared but we spotted white tape encouragingly tied to some of the trees. We pressed on, using my GPS mobile phone to ensure that we were still heading for the observation point. As we gained height the ground looked a little marshy, so I tried to stick to the drier areas. Unfortunately what looked like dry ground was actually just a thin covering of dried out dead foliage. My foot went straight through it and I ended up knee deep in brown bog water. It was surprisingly challenging to extract myself from this predicament and of course Biggles & Beanie – who’d both been quite happy to pull on their harnesses up to this point – now decided not to pull at all.

We went on a little further, clambering over trees and splashing through more brown foot spas before we called it quits and turned back. It had been a struggle to get to this point but the return journey was twice as hard. There was no path to follow, no footsteps to retrace and the ground was treacherous. After what seemed like an age we caught site of another white tape marker and knew we were close to the main path. One big obstacle stood in our way – a huge fallen tree. I wanted to go over it, while Susan and our two intrepid explorers favored a gap underneath it. The thing is, while Beagles can crawl under almost anything by spreading their legs and crawling on their bellies (I call this the “Spider-Beagle” technique), humans.. can’t. Susan got most of the way under the tree only to be stopped by the very thing that enables our species to walk erect while other primates just plod along on all fours: her arse. It took nearly two minutes of wriggling before she was free. As for me, well I did make it over the tree but there were a few close calls as I nearly impaled my own rear end on broken branches. It was only my determination not to have to explain how half a tree got stuck up my rectum to some spotty A&E doctor that gave me the strength to prevail.

Eventually we made it back to the main path and trudged back to the Byre Inn. The walk should have taken less than 2 hours, but our little excursion easily added another hour onto that.

Heading back.. at last!

Our feet were still soaking wet and we were both sweaty and smelling of bog water, but there was no way were going home until we’d had a sit down and another helping of quality pub grub.

The Byre Inn from the Beagle perspective

Next time if the weather is kind we’ll go up nearby Ben A’an, and I’ll just accept that somehow, somewhere along the walk my feet will end up drenched in bog water. It’s happened every time so far, and it’ll happen again.