3rd May Beagle Race – Important Info

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Susan

Jill has asked us to announce that the Beagle Race at the Open on the 3rd May will now start BEFORE the whippet races (Good news – less hanging about!).

Beagle Race start time is 11 am. The check in time is 10.30 am.

Contact number for more info: Maggie Hendrie on 0123 683 0273.

Information will also be available on the Caledonian Thistle Pedigree Whippet Racing Website: www.callythistlewhippetracing.co.uk and the Scottish Beagle Club website: www.scottishbeagleclub.org.uk/html/beagle_racing.html

This Sunday (26th April) we’ll be doing time trials. This will determine handicaps for next week’s race. The faster dogs will be starting further back to give everyone a chance.

Agility – The In’s and Out’s

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Susan

At last week’s session at the agility barn I was very impressed by Beanie’s performance, but I was struggling to keep up with her. This is a plan of last week’s course:

Last Week's Course

This week I put a bit of thought into figuring out how I can cut corners so that Beanie can run faster without leaving me behind. We worked a little on distance commands “Go On” and “In” during the week. I came up with the following course plan that merges bits of last week’s course (which Beanie found easy) with opportunities to practice our new commands:

This Week's Course

It was hard going, but we almost managed it. Beanie didn’t have the same enthusiasm as last week – too much thinking involved in this course and not enough fun! So we finnished up with a great fun session with Beanie, Biggles and Paul.

GPS Biggles

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Paul

Nobody wants to lose their dog, and when you’ve got Beagles this is a constant worry. We’ve been looking for some kind reliable tracking technology for a while, so that if our two ever get too far away from us we can hunt them down. After a lot of research we decided to go for the Retrieva system. We got a tracking collar for Biggles and a compatible mobile phone (more on that later) and this morning we took them out for a quick test drive. As we’ve only just got all the kit, please consider this as a quick brain dump of my first impressions – I’ll do a thorough review later on.

OK, so first a bit of background on the Retrieva system. Obviously you can get full details from the Retrieva website, but here are the basics.Your dog wears a tracking device either in the form of a special collar or a harness. This device is waterproof, tamper resistant and principally uses GPS (satnav) and GSM (mobile phone) technology to send information about your dog’s location to a compatible mobile phone. When your dog goes missing you text the collar to put it into “red alert” mode (Star Trek analogy) and use special software on your phone to track the naughty article down.

Here’s Biggles modelling the collar. He seemed perfectly happy to wear it and it didn’t diminish his ability to jump up and grab a tea towel from the kitchen table, so no problems there.

We loaded him and Beanie into the car and headed off to the park this morning. Very shortly after our departure my phone received a text from “Biggles” informing me that he was no longer at home! It was a very thoughtful gesture by our little boy. Like all youngsters he clearly has a natural ability to use SMS!

I had a quick try of the collar’s locator functions in the park, and they worked well so things are looking good. As I said I’ll give the collar a more thorough trial over the next few days and write a detailed review.

Finally, here are a few shots of what Beanie and Biggles got up to after their walk:

What is it about Biggles that incites this behavior? Lynx for Beagles?