Grizedale Forest – Day One

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Susan

We spent the weekend at Grizedale forest in the Lake District. The main reason for our visit was a cani-cross race on Sunday, but we decided to make a weekend of it so set off at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, arriving just in time for lunch.

The weather wasn’t great and the idea of having lunch outside the visitor center cafe wasn’t overly appealing, but then we spotted the following sign:

Yep, the Lake District is so dog friendly that doggies are even allowed inside human eateries. Beanie could barely believe her luck and insisted on reading the sign for herself!

Of course the sign only said that wet doggies were welcome. It didn’t say anything about dry but noisy Beagles. Regardless, we went inside, and things started out very well. We found a nice table, ordered our meal, and were able to consume most of it without any lightening raids on our plates. Things were looking good, but then another Beagle strolled past our table and Biggles’ woofer burst into action. In an attempt to distract him we turned him to look out the window. There was a moment of silence, then the woofing erupted again, this time fueled by righteous indignation. Not only were there even more doggies outside, but there were humies riding bikes and wearing silly hats. Outrageous! Beanie of course joined in the woof-fest, and we gulped down our tea and tried to make a hasty retreat through the busy restaurant with two crazy baying Beagles spread-eagled and lunging at anything and everything edible. Once outside they forgot what all the fuss was about and we headed off on nice long walk around the forest.

Part of the Go-Ape aerial assault course

The forest was beautiful even on a dull day, and filled with attractions both natural and man-made. What it didn’t have however was an adequate supply of poo bins. Beanie decided to make her first deposit well away from the start of the walk, forcing us to carry her potent air-defreshener with us for a couple of miles. Biggles didn’t want to be left out either, though his contribution was a bit too large to fit in a poo bag, so we checked that no-one was looking, and quickly left the scene of the crime!

Why would anyone make a wooden sculpture in the shape of a Biggly bottom sausage?

After a good long walk of about 10k we headed to our hotel in nearby Ambleside. As soon as we got into our room Beanie and Biggles lept back and forth between the twin beds trying to establish who was sleeping where….this should have given us a clue about what was to follow at bed time! They settled in right away apart from a bit of barking from the Biggly Boy whenever anyone walked past our room. We had dinner in the bar (a conerted stable) and found a nice little alcove with a strong iron ring to tie the dogs to. Bliss – a meal without having to contend with Beanie’s food raids. They settled down for a nice nap:

We considered letting the Beaglets sleep in bed with us, but given their tendency to hog the bed and the fact that we had a race the next day we settled them in their crates. This didn’t go down at all well with Beanie who kept up a steady whine for three or four hours. Eventually I weakened and unbolted the crates. They lept into bed and snuggled down for a deep sleep while Paul and I clung to the edges of the bed trying to catch what sleep we could.

Bloomin’ Beagles!

A Final Harvest and Embracing Technology

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Susan

It was a lovely sunny day today. We woke to blue skies, sunshine and crisp white frost over everything. We had a lovely morning walk in the country lanes around our house and the beaglets harvested the last of the blackberries.

We came home and had a fantastic agility practice session in the garden then indoors for a brekkie of lamb, garlic, sweet potato and courgettes. Now that’s what Beanie and Biggles call a great morning walk!

Both pups are doing really well in agility. We’ve been having a few lessons and Paul has now taken over as Biggles’ handler. We’re even thinking of entering some competitions but we do have some safety concerns.

Beanie and Biggles have had GPS tracking collars for a couple of years now. The collars can be used in lots of ways:

You can set a virtual boundary around your property. If the dog leaves your property the collar sends you a text message and switches into tracking mode – it will keep sending you location updates. Those updates are displayed on a map on your phone so you can quickly get your dog home safely.
On walks if your dog goes out of sight and you want to know where he is you simply send the collar a text message and it will respond by sending it’s location to your phone. Again, the dog’s location is displayed on mapping software on your phone so it’s very easy to find him.

Because of their capacity to get into trouble we prefer that our Beaglets don’t go out of sight at all. They’re always supervised in the garden and we simply don’t unclip their leads if we’re not confident that they’ll stay close. So we don’t use our collars in either of the above situations.

For us the collars come into their own when we do dog sports. In this situation we’re primarily relying on training – the dog knows it’s job and reliably follows our instructions. He *shouldn’t* go out of sight. However, we’re realistic. We know that it’s impossible to train away generations of selective breeding. No matter how well trained there is always a risk that a Beagle will revert to type and take off after a scent never to be seen again.

So, when we take part in sports that involve unclipping the lead Beanie and Biggles always wear their tracking collars. We rarely have to use them – we do our best to make sure the dogs are properly trained for their sports. But if something does go wrong and one of them runs off we have the peace of mind of knowing we’ll have them back safe and sound in minutes. This is particularly reassuring when we’re at events miles from home.

Paul hadn’t been keen on competition but he’s been enjoying working with Biggles and agreed at the weekend that he’d give it a try. But since looking into it more we’ve found out that there’s a bit of a show stopping problem. The Kennel Club rules state that the dog must wear a flat collar with no attachments or no collar at all (to reduce the risk of snagging on equipment). My guess is that the original ‘no collar’ rule is probably a throw back to other canine sports such as working trials. Gun dogs typically don’t wear collars because they have to crawl through the undergrowth and snagging would be highly likely. When agility was invented they probably ‘copied and pasted’ from rules from other sports. The risk of a dog’s collar snagging on agility equipment is negligible compared to the risk of a dog being off-lead in an unenclosed area perhaps miles from home and without a collar/id tag. Anyway, the ‘flat collar only’ rule was introduced a few years ago – BEFORE reliable GPS tracking collars were available. As the dog’s safety is the the driving force behind these rules I’m sure they’ll soon adapt the rule to include the use of GPS collars (I’ve contacted them to ask that it be reviewed). In the meantime we’ll try out a few charity competitions and see how the beaglets do.

Another Beach Another Horse

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Susan

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day so we went to Culzean Castle – a National Trust castle and country estate half an hour down the coast from us. It’s a lovely place for dog walks. Not only a castle built right on the cliffs overlooking the sea, but formal gardens, woodlands, a deer farm, a huge swan pond, cliff top walks and lovely beaches and sandy coves.

As always the first thing Biggles did when we arrived on the beach was get his nose down and make a beeline for the nearest horse tracks:

There are horses in the field behind us and we often meet the farmer riding during morning walks or chat with her while she’s grooming the horses. In fact we occasionally walk beside her on horseback. Beanie and Biggles are completely laid back about this. Yet the moment we come across horse tracks on a beach – ANY beach, Biggles goes ballistic and Beanie normally joins in.

We spent about 3 hours walking around the estate. We didn’t do anything particularly energetic but I guess all the different sights, sounds and smells were very stimulating as the Beaglets were knackered when we got home:

Turn the light out mum