. . . And We Chose a Beagle

The beagle, according to the AKC, is the fourth most popular dog in America, among the 161 recognized breeds.  To my mind, this flies in the face of the eyeball test — do you see a lot of beagles in your neighborhood? — but I’m not gonna quibble.  I referred to  these breed popularity rankings in my Breed Pride Week post last month, and promised to explain how we wound up with our own little tri-colored treasure.  Your first reaction might be:  No explanation necessary.  He’s handsome.  He’s cuddly.  He’s peace-loving.  He’s affectionate.  All in all, he’s pretty adorable; why wouldn’t you choose a dog like that?  True, very true.  On the other hand, he’s stubborn.  He’s food-obsessed.  He’s untrainable.  He’s scent-driven.  He has a one-track mind, and does what he wants when he wants it.  Put this

second set of traits together, and sometimes I wonder how beagles even made the top 160!

But back to our own choosing process, which, I have to admit now, was a textbook case of hearing what you want to hear.  Carol and I had zeroed in on a beagle from the git-go.  When she was a little girl she’d had a beagle named Toy that she liked, sort of.  I thought beagles were snazzy looking dogs.  Oh — and wasn’t Snoopy a beagle?  That’s pretty much all we had, but we were somehow utterly convinced this was the way to go.  So what we did next was we searched high and low for facts, quasi-facts, and opinions that would make our hasty decision look measured, well-researched,

and painstakingly thought out.

For example:  We read in Barron’s Illustrated Guide to 140 Dog Breeds that “the beagle has an excellent nose, and that is the cause of its only fault as a family dog.  Once it has found an interesting trail, that very fine nose is glued to the ground, and the dog is gone.”  Obviously, what the author was trying to say was that this is a dog who is stubborn as a mule, and will never follow you, not even if he lives to

be one hundred and fifty.  He will only follow his nose.  Somehow, we failed to pick up on this.

When we read that the beagle “is not aggressive toward strangers, but does announce their arrival with a penetrating beagle howl,” we didn’t understand this to mean you’d have to stop up your ears with cotton puffs or with Beats headphones every time the UPS man, the gardener, or your mail carrier comes to the door.

And when we saw, according to Barron’s, that “this is a loving, cheerful, and playful dog that adapts to about any situation, but its feelings are easily hurt and it carries a grudge,” we chose to overlook what was being said clear as sky-writing:  That if he doesn’t get a Flossie when he wants a Flossie, he’ll think nothing of peeing on our Oriental rug.

After doing all this “research,” I still had one very important question:  Could I take the beagle with me when I went for a run?  I

didn’t find this information in any of my sources, so I actually called a professional dog consultant, which cost me a pretty penny.  I told her I like to go for a three- or four-mile jog every day, and would really love to have a dog that would run along with me.  Would that be in the cards with a beagle?

“Well . . .” she hesitated.  “I don’t know about that.  They do love to run . . . but not exactly the way you’re probably used to running, or the way you enjoy running.  Beagles are very easily distracted by scents, you know, and they’ll try to tug you all over the place.”

This is what she said. My take-away was that, yes, a beagle would make an excellent running companion.

And that’s how it went.  That’s how — out of over 160 breeds, against every piece of reasonable advice, from every conceivable source, including, most notably, current owners — we chose a beagle.

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