Beagle on the beach

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Yesterday afternoon we met up with Kathleen MacDonald in the park. She didn’t have any of her Beagles with her, but she had the next best thing: Dillon. Beanie and Dillon had a thoroughly good romp around the park for a couple of hours while we chatted.

Afternoons are normally Beanie’s nap time (actually any time that doesn’t involve eating or running around like a maniac is nap time) and I have to say there were moments when Dillon seemed to have exhausted her batteries.

But still, they had a great time together!

While the dogs were playing the conversation naturally wandered onto good places for dog walks. The beaches at Irvine and Troon were mentioned, and this morning we decided to give Irvine a try.

We had taken Beanie to Irvine once before. Unfortunately that visit had been at the weekend, and it was way too busy to risk letting Beanie off lead. This morning however the beach was almost deserted – even though the weather was superb – so we unclipped her lead almost immediately.

She quickly found a friend to play with, and although Beanie’s no slouch when it comes to running, she had trouble keeping up with this long legged athlete.

We must have walked for miles along the beach, just enjoying the sun, sea, and silly puppy antics.

On the way back we ran into a fun loving pointer called Tor…

… and a gentle labrador-staffie cross whose name unfortunately we didn’t get.

We may not have got the dog’s name, but Beanie certainly got a bite of his or her bottom!

Hmmm lip-licking tasty!

If the beach is always so quiet on a weekday morning – and the lab-cross owner indicated that it usually is – you can bet we’ll be going back there pretty soon!

A Baby Brother for Beanie

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OK, it’s VERY early to be breaking the news, but we’re quite excited :)

We’ve always planned to have a second Beagle as Beanie just loves company so much. We’d considered a rescue, but more recently we’ve felt that it would work out better if we introduced a new pup to the family when Beanie’s around 18 months old. She’s a little tom boy and tends to get on better with boys, so we think it needs to be a baby brother.

The other day I got in touch with Liz from Newlin Beagles (where we got Beanie) and asked her to put us on her waiting list for a little boy sometime after April.

Apparantly she’s hoping to mate Newlin Waffle and Newlin Sailor in February. Newlin Waffle is Beanie’s half sister (Newlin Kelsey was mum to both of them), and Newlin Sailor is apparantly a fit, agile boy. So Biggles (yep, our little boy has been named before he’s even conceved!) should be able to keep up with our little athlete.

Ballistic Swimming

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Beanie has had her first “real” swim at the park! It’s not the best of photos (heavy tree cover) but here’s the moment she took the plunge:

It’s a landmark moment for our pup, and proof that those swimming lessons have done some good. Admittedly the fact that it was a really hot morning probably helped too – she waded right into the cool water and swam without any prompting from us. We’ve booked another lesson for her next week to keep up the momentum, and I’m very hopeful that she’ll become a regular swimmer in the pond and streams at the park.

So it looks like we’re well on the way to conquering our Beagle’s inherent dislike for water. The other Beagle-ism I’ve been trying to break is her total disinterest in playing fetch. For a long time she would run after the ball/stick/frisbee/whatever only in response to competition from other dogs. I have perservered though, trying short fetch games in the garden whenever she seemed receptive.

Dog walkers in one of our local parks seem to have an addiction to those ballistic ball throwing thingies. Being naturally stubborn (I’m from Yorkshire) , I’ve been determined to resist this flexible plastic virus, but I have noted that lately Beanie has shown much more interest in balls whenever they’re in use. Well, last night we succumbed:

Damn you Tesco, damn you and your cheap pet products!

It only cost £1 from our local Tesco. It came with a poor quality orange tennis ball, and as I picked it off the shelf I said to Susan “that’ll last five minutes”. I was wrong, because in fact it lasted just 3 minutes.

Our little Olympian chewer Beanie was the first to puncture it’s delicate orange epidermis.

Hmm, I’m sure that ball was spherical a moment ago

It was all downhill from there, of course.

Penny and Sophie finish it off with a tug of war

Still, it does enable you to throw much faster and further, and I think it could help us to break the Beagle Fetch Taboo. It’ll get another outing this afternoon, albeit with a more robust ball!