My Beagle History |
Versatile
Beagles a short story |
I have been interested in Beagles since I was a young boy. My first dog was a beagle. I named him Pepsi, after the soft drink. I am not at all sure why I choose that name, but 25 years ago I am sure I thought it was perfect. I think I might have been about six years old when I first got that Beagle. I remember very little about him, but he was mostly white with black markings (I think). It also comes to mind that he would rather chase Deer than rabbits. That is not a healthy pass time for a dog in Northern Michigan. It is not all together clear how, but at one point we went hunting and he never came back. To me as a young boy this was very disturbing. To my parents I am sure it was a relief.
Even as a young boy I learned from my experience with Pepsi. My next hunting dog, Pepper, was given to me by the local hound guru. I seem to recall that I was around 12 at this time. He had too many dogs, and was concentrating on running coonhounds at the time, and didn't have time work with Pepper. He said the only problem with Pepper was that she wouldn't run cotton tails, only snow shoes. What I didn't know was that Hares were in at the bottom of their cycle at that time. It was like living in South Dakota with a dog that wouldn't hunt Pheasant, only Partridge. I was very excited that I had a real rabbit dog. I took Pepper hunting every chance I got. I took her to the partridge woods with me, I took into the Christmas trees across the road from my house, I even took her coon hunting once. To my knowledge, I never took her where there was even the slightest chance of her finding a snowshoe track to run. I never killed a rabbit with Pepper.
One day I noticed that Pepper was putting on some extra weight. I mentioned it to my Grandpa, who seemed a little concerned about my comment. My parents and I lived next door to my grandparents. He and I had been hunting coon four or five nights a week with his American Walker Butch. In our opinion Butch was the best Coon hound we had every seen. In those days car traffic was rare where we hunted, so we road hunted with Butch. That meant that the dog would run ahead of us on the road, and if he crossed a track we would get out to listen to him run, and then go to the tree to harvest the coon. Butch had a good nose, incredible foot speed, (if the road had too many curves we couldn't keep up with him), but best of all he handled as well as any dog I have seen yet. We didn't have to use a leash to drag him away from the tree like so many other hounds, he would load into the truck when he was told to, and he came when he was called. I sure that most people reading this can see where it is going. The extra weight that I mention in the beginning of the paragraph was a definite symptom of pregnancy. I had no idea who the sire of the upcoming pups was. Butch seemed a likely candidate, but so did the neighbors Brittany Spaniel.
It was obvious who the father was once the pups were born. Two of them looked almost identical to Butch. From that litter of nine I kept two, Blackie and Salt. Blackie was the runt of the litter, and was too cute for me to let her go to anyone else. Salt was a huge clumsy pup that turned up missing around six months after he was born. I was more interested in coon hunting than rabbit hunting at the time, and decided that I would turn Blackie into a coon hound. I hunted Blackie with her dad every chance I got. She was running with him, and showing good interest in the tree. One day she got loose and got hit on the road. I will always wonder what kind of dog she would have become.
That was my early experience with Beagles, and half bred Beagles. At that point in my life I became more interested in girls than dogs and took about a ten year break from Beagles. The fall after I was married to my lovely bride Stacy, I talked her into my getting a Beagle for Christmas. We were living very close to her parents Christmas Tree Farm, and it was loaded with cotton tails. Having learned from my past mistakes with unexpected pups, I got a male pup from a well respected breeder on the other side of the state. Bow was about three months old when I got him, and he was very timid. I assumed that he would warm up to me in time. After a lot of time, and patience he did warm up to me a little.
In an effort to get me to come up north and see him more often my Grandpa bought a started female beagle just before I bought Bow. He named her Gertie for reasons only he and God fully understand. Gertie was doing a fair job of running rabbits in northern Michigan but once again Grandpa couldn't really hear her that well. I was really struggling with Bow, as he seemed to have no idea what to do in the woods. Grandpa suggested rather assertively that I take Gertie with me and run her with Bow on the Tree Farm. I know this is contrary to the opening sentence of this paragraph, but that is what he wanted me to do. At that point I only had one kennel in which to house dogs, and we figured Bow would be more inclined to follow Gertie if they were kenneled together. This was a good plan at the time, and it did work, but like all things there is a time and a place.
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The results of keeping together a male and female dog for too long. |
That is how I ended up with my fist litter of purebred beagle pups. Gertie had seven pups. I sold 3 as pups, started 3 on the tree farm, and one died. I sold two of the started pups, and kept one of the pups. Blackie was making very good progress on becoming a very good dog.
About ten months after the pups were born my wife and I moved in order for her to enroll in law school. We looked for a place we could rent that would allow us to keep our dogs, but were unsuccessful in our hunt. We moved the dogs and kennels to my Grandpa's house in northern Michigan. At this point, the dogs were four hours away. This would have been be a bigger problem, if I hadn't ruptured my Achilles tendon a few months after moving. It really wouldn't have mattered if I had had the dogs here with me, as I wouldn't have been able to run them anyway.
While I was hurt, we had another litter of pups out of Bow and Gertie. All of there pups were sold. Several are hunting now, and I know of one male that has already sired a litter of pups.
Unfortunately, Gertie and Blackie died during the summer of 2002. There exact cause of death is unknown to me. It was a very bad experience.
I bought Princess a few weeks after losing my running hounds. You can check her progress here. She appears have a great deal of potential. I believe she will be a great rabbit hound. More about this later.
