My dog Rusty

Rusty is a pure bred AKC Beagle. He is tri-color with ticking. Rusty is almost a year old now and is a great friend. He likes to go running with me whenever he can. Unfortunately for him I'm not as regular as I should be in my running. Rusty loves playing with balls. We are working on fetch with his balls, but he likes to run past me and lay down with the ball. Rusty hasn't liked the pool much at all. He doesn't show much skill swimming... we have to work on that one too. I just don't like swimming myself so its hard to make him do something we both don't like. I will go in with him some weekend when its hot and I'm in the mood to get wet. Rusty does this thing where he leaves his tongue sticking out. Sometimes he does this at night and falls asleep like that, and in the morning the part of his little tongue that's outside of his mouth is all dry. Rusty likes to play with bear, my old dog who is 15 human years old, like a puppy would with another dog. Poor bear doesn't have the energy or strength to play like that though so we have to stop it when we can. We have been having problems with tics... yuck! I have pulled dozens of tics off of rusty and a couple off of myself. We are using front line and other defensive measures to get rid of them. These tics have taught me a thing or two and all in all it has been a good learning experience.