Dodgy Flyball

Yesterday’s morning walk was cut short when Beanie decided to eat another dog walker’s sausages. The sausages themselves weren’t the problem though – it was the fact that they were wrapped in a big plastic bag which Beanie swallowed whole after stealing it from the dog walker’s coat pocket that was the real issue. Anyway, another shot of vomit inducing eyedrops from the vet brought the whole package back up before it could wreak havoc in her intestines. Beanie’s pick-pocket antics have been a problem for a while now, so to curb it we’re now asking other dog walkers not to offer her any treats, as it’s the treat handouts that seem to be at the bottom of it.

As for the swallowing side of things, I’ve no doubt that it was my reaction that caused it this time. As soon as Beanie saw that I was hell bent on getting the bag off her she knew she had something highly valuable, and the only way to hang on to it was either to take flight or to speed-swallow it. To combat this, we’re now teaching her an “emergency” recall word. This is a word so strongly associated with fun and fantastic treats that she’ll drop whatever she’s doing and come running to us. Unlike regular recall commands, it’ll only ever be used when she’s doing something dangerous, and because it doesn’t involve us going after her and isn’t associated with taking away something she likes, hopefully it’ll sidestep the flee or swallow reaction!

Anyway, as compensation for yesterday’s unpleasantness we headed off to the park this morning with our latest doggy indulgence: a portable agility kit. Previously we’d tried making our own from plastic tubing, but it was horribly unwieldy compared to the lightweight stuff in the kit.

We set it up in the park’s enclosure, and had a go at a pseudo-flyball game that Susan’s been working on with Beanie. In real flyball, the dog sprints over a series of jumps, hits a spring-loaded box that releases a tennis ball, then catches the ball and returns over the jumps to the handler. In the Beanie version we just throw the ball over the jumps while holding her collar, release her, and hope and pray that when she gets to the ball she’ll bring it back. The amazing thing is that more often than not, she does!

Of course Biggles is too young for all that jumping, though in truth I doubt he would attempt to jump over the poles – he’s much more into brute force and would likely run straight through all the obstacles, sending them flying in the process. Fortunately for Biggles, Susan created another flyball variant involving a tunnel:

As it turned out, this version of flyball doesn’t involve the dog bringing the ball back to you. Instead, he’s just supposed to grab it, run off and give it a robust chewing. If those truly are the rules, then Biggles did very well indeed. He certainly enjoyed himself big time!

After a few rounds of Beanie & Biggles flyball, Beanie had a couple of minutes of conventional agility practice..

In Beanie’s world, agility = cheese

After that, we let them have a good old fashioned run around. Initially Biggles did very well and led the chase despite some bold faced cheating by Beanie:

Soon the confines of the enclosure proved too limiting..

so we headed out on a walk around the park. We kept them apart for the first part of the walk – I took Beanie in one direction, while Susan took Biggles the other, but about half way round we met up and let them have another run together:

This time the shoe was on the other paw, and Beanie led the chase. Being a little tease, she let Biggles get pretty close at times..

.. then abruptly went up a gear and left him eating her dust

By the time we got them back on lead little Bigglet was knackered, but he’d thoroughly enjoyed himself, and that’s what counts!