On the trail of sniffs

As I have become better behaved in the garden, or my grounds, I have also been allowed out on longer walks. I have to stay on the lead though when I am outside the garden. We go out on walks through the fields and woods near where I live, and the smells that fill my nose are wondrous and plentiful. Often we will mix up the walks with different places and if the weather is a bit naughty, we might go into the woods for quite a long time, rather than wandering around the fields getting really wet.

Now, as a Beagle Harrier, my nose plays quite an important part of my general day to day life. I tend to get on trails and then follow them mercilessly. This makes walks through the fields and woods somewhat more of a trail scent hunt and my nose barely leaves the ground. For mum and dad it can mean that one arm is longer than the other, as I tend to pull quite a lot when I want to go in the hedgerows and verges. This is where all the small creatures live and I think I have introduced my parents to many creatures that they didnt know lived in copses, woods and hedgerows. As we have said before, when we first started on outside walks, I pulled on the lead immediately after leaving the house. We live near quite a busy road and the humans were scared I was going to do something stupid. I haven’t, but thats not to say I haven’t tried. Once I was running with my dad who was training for one of his marathon races, and I tried to dart out into the road. He wasn’t very pleased with me, and told me off. I probably deserved it, but there was something interesting there apart from the front of the approaching car. I seemed not to have learned anything, as the following week I was running with dad and he wanted me to run in a straight line. Now, there wasn’t much chance of this happening and I was suddenly distracted by a critter in the hedgerow. Sadly for dad I ran across his path and he had to leap over the lead to avoid falling over. We got back and he said he couldn’t go running with me, as I couldn’t concentrate and was always darting around. Apparently this was dangerous as he needs to run in a straight line, whilst I need to be sniffing hedgerows. This is what I do. I had sad ears, as I enjoyed running with him. I had quite a bit of freedom. It was fun.

So, I went back to being walked around the fields and woods, which is always fun and very interesting. When we left the house you will recall that I was being trained to walk to heel close to the main road. I was gradually getting better at walking well. Mum was getting cleverer every day, she was working out where I was pulling and where I was walking better. We were walking at heel much more often. This was ok for a time but my senses regularly overtook my ability to walk nicely and to heel so I fairly often relapsed into trying to get somewhere faster than necessary.

I have walked my pawrents for thousands of miles whilst I have lived here. I think I have walked, pulled or run over most of the paths, parks, fields and woods within 5-6 miles radius of my house. This allows my senses to be filled with sights and sounds. We deliberately walk in different places so we get a different perspective and we don’t get bored. I think they realised quite soon that I would need walking in all weathers which is great for me. We get really muddy, wet and dirty, I get to stroll through puddles, hedges, rivers and sniff around through woods. In the summer we get to walk through the parched fields, as well as cool off in the river on the return home. One of the best bits is walking through the fields of wheat as there are many critters living in there. Being a careful and fleet footed Beagle Harrier I don’t damage the crops, allowing them to bend as I breeze past.