We haven’t been to lure coursing for a couple of months so we were all looking forward to today’s meeting at Rumbling Bridge. It lived up to our expectations and more!

Biggly Boy – Our little boy has grown up!

Anyone that regularly reads our blog will know that Beanie has always been the athlete in our family. It’s not that Biggles is bad at sports – he’s actually pretty good compared to most. But Beanie really is quite exceptional for a Beagle. At lure coursing Beanie would always be glued to the lure and running flat out while little Biggles would make a bee-line for the home straight and pounce on the lure when it came past.

When we arrived today we saw that the course (which is normally the same every month) had been changed. We were confident that Beanie would manage just fine, but fully expected Biggles to be very confused by this – how would he run to the home straight if he didn’t know where it was? We were in for a BIG surprise. See for yourself:

Biggles absolutely trounced his big sister. He stuck to the lure like glue the whole way around and he was fast! For the first time ever Biggles had knocked his sister out of the competition – and he’d done it in style.

Biggly Boy was clearly enjoying his success and was very keen to check out the competition between races:

Biggles Meercat

In his next race Biggles was up against Biscuit, a very fit, fast little Whippet. We fully expected Biscuit to open up such a lead that Biggles would loose sight of the lure and give up. In fact, Paul positioned himself on the start line for photos thinking it would be the only part of the race Biggles would complete. We were SO wrong. For the first half of the course Biggles stayed with the lure. Biscuit would open up a lead (but a surprisingly small lead – our boy was powering around the course), but everytime the lure changed direction Biscuit would overshoot whereas Biggles turned with the lure and would take the lead again. If this kept up there was a chance that Biggles would do the impossible and beat a Whippet! However, on the second half of the course there was a nice long straight section. Biscuit built up a bigger lead and Biggles decided to cut a corner. They finished the race together but Biggly boy had cheated.

Beanie and Biggles had another run together at the end and exactly the same thing happened.

We think Beanie’s still got the raw speed, although there’s not much in it now. But whereas Beanie (and Biscuit) just loved to open up and run Biggly boy had one goal in mind – catching the lure. Somehow he knew when the lure was going to change direction. Had he detected the trampled area of grass where other dogs had run the course before? Was he using scent and sight? It looks as if our boy is a lot smarter than we’ve given him credit for!

Here’s a couple more pictures from the day’s racing.

There are more of Paul’s piccies from Sunday on Sue and Kevin’s blog:

http://lure-coursing.blogspot.com/2010/06/photos-from-sunday-6th-june-2010.html

The next lure coursing meeting at Rumbling Bridge will be held this Sunday. Everyone welcome – full details available at Sue and Kevin’s blog:

http://lure-coursing.blogspot.com/

A great day out for dogs and their two-legged companions! Especially good fun fo for hounds and terriers.