I write serious articles on plants and gardening and sometimes just get bored with it all.  I need some comic relief even in my writing.  There isn’t anything more frustrating or comic than living with a beagle.  Don’t get me wrong.  We love our beagle.  Her name is Bailey and she is the largest type of her breed.  She stands 24” and she should weigh around 50-55 lbs.   I have had people tell me she is a harrier beagle.  Her vet just said: she’s a big beagle, they are common around here.  Most people look at her and say, “Beagle and what else?” and are surprised to learn she is all beagle because she is so big.  Even if she wasn’t tri colored, white footed, with the white tip on her tail, and looked just like a beagle, her personality, bark, attitude, and being a stomach and nose on feet is definitely beagle. She’s pure hound, pure beagle, and sometimes, a pure pain.

Bailey is my second beagle.  My first one, Porky, was practically a human and really knew how to turn the charm on to get what he wanted.  He had the Italian landlady wrapped around his little toe.  She always sent a pot of  homemade spaghetti sauce upstairs for Porky....and oh, I could have some too.  Bailey prefers either the sneaky route or the direct snatch and run.  That’s why she rarely weighs 50 lbs and at her heaviest, was around 70 lbs.  She was adipose beagle,  the very definition of rolly poly.   We got her weight down and everyone is happier …except Bailey.  She thought we were starving her.  What is difficult about Bailey?  Well, she’s a counter cruiser, food stealer, and damn clever thief when it comes to food.  She also is completely  not conflicted  about taking a dump on the floor when we are away.  It’s almost like: well you were gone, I had to go.  She is single minded when barking at people on the street, dogs, and when on the track of a squirrel or rabbit to the point of insanity.  We live on a busy street and the barking opportunities are many.  Probably the most irritating trait is the food stealing….and hiding.  My kids have found sticks of Crisco, loaves of bread, jars of peanut butter, which the dog opened and licked down as far as her tongue would reach, jelly jars opened and licked down as far as she could reach, yogurt containers in their beds.   Before we can leave the house, we must beagle-ize.  Get everything either in high cupboards, behind locked doors, inside the oven or microwave, set way back from the edge of the counter and table, and the garbage put outside.  Forget one thing, and you come home to a mess.  The worse mess was the 5 lbs of flour.  She ate approximately 2 lbs, had at least half a pound glued around her muzzle, and the other 2 and half pounds spread around the house in piles, sprinkles, and gluey patches where she licked it on the floor.  Then there was the diarrhea she got from eating all that flour.  You ask, so what do you expect out of a puppy?  She’s not a puppy, she’s 7 years old and getting white about the face.  Bailey did this when she was 6.   And lest you think we don’t know how to properly train dogs and it’s our fault she is the way she is,  we’ve always had very well mannered dogs that learned quickly and liked to please us.  Bailey?  Well, Bailey sometimes likes to please us, sometimes she doesn’t.  But like I said, we love her and there are beagle traits to love. She is particularly sweet when she is sleeping.

We got Bailey from a local SPCA.  She was just 6 weeks old when we went to look at her and her siblings.  At the time we had a border collie named Fergus.  He was 9 years old and the people at the SPCA said we had to bring him.  It didn’t matter what puppy we wanted, he had to pick it out because he had to get along with it.  Fergus, like a lot of borders, was very shy.  He was equally afraid of both of the ones we picked out.  They played and pulled at him and he looked like he would rather die than put up with any more of this.  He looked down at one pup, wagged his tail and that’s the one we brought home.  The rest is history.