Beagle
A pack hound with a voice built to carry across a field, which is not what most streets want. Nose first in everything, and food moves it when nothing else will.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin, CC BY 2.0
Overview
The Beagle is a small English pack hound bred to run hare, and it is now one of the most popular family dogs in the world and the most used laboratory dog, both for the same reason: it is small, sound, and unusually tolerant.
UK data gives a life expectancy at birth of 9.85 years. It comes in two sizes, under thirteen inches and thirteen to fifteen inches.
Temperament
Cheerful, sociable and led entirely by its nose. Beagles are good with children, good with other dogs, and they are not guard dogs in any respect.
The honest difficulties are three: recall, which is unreliable once a scent is found, noise, because the bay carries and they use it, and food, because a Beagle will eat anything and steal it if necessary. None of those are training failures, they are the breed working correctly.
Care and grooming
A short dense coat that needs a weekly brush. They shed steadily.
Ears need weekly checking and cleaning. Obesity is the breed's biggest health problem by a distance, and it drives everything else. Intervertebral disc disease, epilepsy and hypothyroidism occur, and Musladin-Lueke syndrome has a DNA test.
Living and exercise
An hour or more a day, and scent work if possible, because giving a Beagle its nose to use is worth more than distance.
A secure fence, and one they cannot dig under. They do well with another dog and poorly alone all day, and a lonely Beagle bays, which is how most neighbour complaints about the breed start.
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