So anyways. Bella is now almost 17 months old!!! Where does the time go? She defiantly has calmed down in the last 3 months and is now a very contented puppy, when do you stop calling them a puppy and start calling them a dog? She happily sleeps away the day and Ive started leaving her out of her crate during the day and all she does is just stretch out on the sofa and sleep. Ive yet to leave her out over night but this is purely down to her routine as she knows when we are all heading up to bed and gets herself off to bed too and I'm thinking why spoil a good thing? I know she wouldn't get up to anything naughty if left out, the chewing phase has definitely ended and she is happy to find a spot on the sofa with her blanket and have a quick dig of the blanket and curl up and fall asleep. However she is soon stretched out and claiming the entire sofa as her own!
What have we been up to? Every weekend we take her out on longer walks further afield from home and try and plan it to be a fun walk, changing routes and places we go each time so its always different which she seems to love. Always lots to explore. This weekend we had her off lead for some time and she was an angel. She didn't go far ahead and just spent ages running back and forth and playing fetch with a chunk of wood she found. I will try and upload the video we took of her being a loon.
Bell has recently started back at training classes. We felt she needed the challenge of learning new commands and also the extra socialisation is a huge bonus. We meet practically no walkers and dogs on our walks and this is meaning when bell does see another dog she gets hyper and being a beagle howls!! which to someone else sounds scary lol but its all noise and excitement. Plus its supportive for us as owners to ensure we are doing whats right and gain tips and expertise. The trainer runs a variety of classes and we would do them all given the time but currently doing 2 classes a week, a Monday and weekend for an hour. The Monday is inside a village hall and the weekend is out in the public (eek) on a huge common and also in Guildford high street (omg!) so we can practise with real every day scenarios and distractions.
Now last weeks class-first in almost a year! was umm well disastrous if I'm honest LOL!! Firstly Bells howled at every dog in the class and every time the trainer started to talk us through the commands bell began to bay. If another dog howled back it became a competition between the 2 of them :s She then went on to TOTALLY forget every single command she has ever learnt. Even Sit the most basic and easiest command of all, nope she just stood there, barked at us and looked all round the room as if to say you're boring me now.
We walked out the class feeling deflated, me more then hubby he thinks she was still good. Once we got home I gave her the command she decided I was asking her to do in gibberish judging by her face! and bingo straight away she did it!!! Oh the joys of owning a beagle lol.
All week we have been practising the command and hand signals and she gets it every time, we can even do them from a distance and with just the hand signals alone. SO I went in to last nights class a little apprehensive but aside from howling at the dogs on meeting them she settled straight down and focused 100% on us :O) we even dropped her lead to do the commands and she didn't run off, she didn't wander over to the other dogs or their treats she just listened to the commands did them, albeit with a bark each time!! and the trainer was impressed. Not as impressed as we were with her. She was a super star.
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| Me and Bella in the snow Dec '10 |
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| Reindeer Bell snow 2010. |
