the boyz

IMG_2716, originally uploaded by estrojennie.

here they are crashed on the couch. in this kind of heat they'd much rather hang out here in the air conditioned living room than outside in the smoldering hot backyard!!

albert sunning himself

this afternoon I went out into the backyard, and there was Albert sunning himself. on top of the hot tub (the lid was on!).

how cute is our rescue beagle!?!?!

and just so stella doesn't get jealous...

IMG_2648, originally uploaded by estrojennie.

This is Stella getting out of the water on our canoe trip. That's our friends son Tavish...he got so excited whenever a dog went into the water.

canoe trip

IMG_2602, originally uploaded by estrojennie.

Albert went on his very first canoe trip last weekend!! we were a bit nervous, as we had no idea how he would react to water, the canoe, wearing a lifejacket, sleeping in a tent, and hanging out around a camp fire surrounded by a million good smells.

He was amazing!!!

Arthur and Stella are great camping dogs, but Albert blew us away! He stayed on leash the entire weekend and didn't make a peep, he loved sleeping in the tent, and as it turns out...he isn't afraid of water and actually did a little swimming when Adam put him in.

Have I mentioned lately how awesome Albert is???

meet sweet alice!!!

isn't she the sweetest thing you've ever seen? this little beauty is our newest rescue beagle!! i fell in love with her the second i saw this picture...but then i heard about her emergency dental surgery and loved her even more. this little lady had...are you ready...THIRTY FIVE teeth removed. she has 5 left. but now she's pain and infection free...and hey, she'll get to scarf down Merrick's amazing wet doggie food for the rest of her days!

i never get sick of helping rescue beagles...ever. and i never get tired of the stories we hear from foster parents who experience exactly what my family did when we fostered Albert. it's always amazing for me to hear the same things again and again "she/he is like a new dog", "they are the best pet we've ever had", "we can't believe how much she/he has changed".

if you've never thought about fostering, you should! it's a really amazing experience.

this is arthur at the park on saturday. he was really hot. check out that tongue!

also wanted to mention that i have added google ads to my blog. if you click on the ads all ad revenues will be donated to Big on Beagles!!!

howling beagles - explained!

a few people have written to ask me how i got the beagles to howl. i have to say, our 3 guys are usually really quite, and never howl unless encouraged by us.

my very first beagle sarah (back when i was about 15) would howl if she got really, really excited and only if i would howl at her first. it was a great party trick to get her going in a singsong of sweet beagle howls.

so when we got stella we tried to make her howl. she wouldn't...until one day we were on a canoe trip, and my husband and i jumped into the water to go swimming without her. she started baying and howling and we could tell it was out of sadness that we were in the water and she wasn't. so we took that theory and tried it out with other things...like asking her where auntie or uncle so and so were (our beagles know everyone based on their names. so, for example, if we say "where's auntie allee" they will run around the house looking for her, and when they don't see her they will start to howl).

if they don't particularly like someone, they won't howl. and that's how we got them going in the video i posted.

we always use "where's uncle matt" because they *love* their uncle matt and that makes them howl non-stop!