To not want a beagle?

[tired1245]

We've always wanted a dog, house just feels empty without one as both had one when living at parents house.
He's got his heart set on a beagle, when i would love a cockapoo.
I've just heard always bad things about beagles, how they're hard to train and recall is awful.
I don't really want the hair either!
He won't be able to take a month off to train the dog when we get it, maximum 2 weeks.
With a cockapoo I just think they'll be a lot better to train, don't malt nowhere near as much as a beagle would and we've got a 3 month old, so the last thing I need is a dog running off on a walk when I've got a baby with me. What do we do?

If you like your neighbours please don't follow suggestions upthread and get a Jack Russell.
Fucking barking little shits they are.

I love dogs and have only had bad experiences with beagles, YANBU.
We have a Staffordshire bull terrier and she’s easy to train and great around my son.

Beagles are really different. My SIL has one and she's so, so so lovely but just really does not give a fuck what she's told to do.

Absolutely, I've said it loads of times. You need to work with your dogs strengths and instincts. You just can't go around comparing them to labs and retrievers and tbh it pisses me off when people do.

Beagles are scent hounds that have been bred over hundreds of years to work independently from people. Labs, spaniels, retrievers etc. are bred to work alongside humans and to obey orders. You can't train a beagle the same way you train a Labrador and expect the same results.

I would wait until your baby is older and in the meantime do some research into suitable breeds to suit your circumstances.

We have a beagle and he is an amazing family dog. He's a rescue and had some challenges, but never chewed our furniture.

That said now is not the time to adopt a dog. It wouldn't be fair to any dog.

I had one and it would bite a lot, forgot how to not shit inside etc. No amount of walking would help. I re-homed her and I think the next owners had her put down, unfortunately.

Just because you've had one bad experience, doesn't mean all beagles are like that.

I don't recognise any of what you've said in my dog. He gets one walk a day, has never pooed inside the house since he was 12 weeks old, has never destroyed anything or bitten anyone.

do not get a dog with such a small baby itl be too difficult, id wait until he was 3/4 depending on the child they will enjoy walking them etc and easier to explain about how to be around a dog .. my children and i want a dog (either beagle , miniature daushound or a king charles spaniel but open to suggestions ! we have a 11/nearly10+4 year old ) x

@Josette77 they're amazing aren't they? Such a soppy, loving breed.

Just because you've had one bad experience, doesn't mean all beagles are like that

Of course not, but it's heard of a lot with beagles that they're hard work. Some mightn't be, but some are, more often than a lot of other breeds

And OP asked for our opinions/ experiences, so I gave mine.

Also, you seem to think it takes a short time to “train” a dog. Regardless of breed, it takes months and months and months to truly train a dog. Especially if you can’t be there most of the time and have other HUGE pressures on your time such as a small baby.
I’m a dog lover and have a 4 dog household and even I would think twice about taking on a puppy again because they are so much hard work. Do not under estimate it.

I have a cokerpoo, he is lovely and great at recall. Good with my children too. His mum is a show cocker spaniel, so he is quite laid back. My friends cockerpoo is wild, loud (as in never stops barking) and difficult to recall. She's not sure about the parents though. I've met some lovely beagles, however a neighbour's small dog was attacked by a beagle last week. Her dog had to have a life saving operation but is recovering now. Having a puppy is hard work. Would you do more research into the different breeds and buy one in a few years when your baby is older? Toilet training and broken sleep comes with a puppy for a few months!

, why do you think you don't see beagles doing agility at Crufts?

Well mainly because beagles and not fast and agile in the correct way - they'd not stand a chance against a collie as they just don't have the same acceleration and top speed. Absolutely nothing to do with obedience.

If you like your neighbours please don't follow suggestions upthread and get a Jack Russell.
Fucking barking little shits they are.

This is something that can be dealt with and trained with JRT's if done from a young age, however I'd definitely not get one with a baby or toddler. DD7 currently looks like she's been wrestling tigers from our pup. She's got the hang of immediately replacing/distracting with a toy now but it took a couple of days to get quick enough to completely avoid the needle teeth.

We had a series of beagles growing up. In my experience, they are great with children, good guard dogs in that they will bark at strangers on your property ( including the totally not strange postman), not destructive of things in the house, not aggressive ( never came across a biter) with people or other dogs and easily house trained .

On the down side they need a lot of exercise - running fast off a lead, which is why I give a side eye to ones being raised in a town. They will come back but immediate return is not guaranteed so not for the time sensitive walker . They are also greedy little sods and will steal any and all food at any opportunity .

I used to work in an animal shelter. The amount of beagles that were brought in to us was ridiculous. Beagles need a lot of work and commitment and can be unpredictable around small children (obviously there are exceptions to this). I really wouldn’t risk having a beagle if you have a baby

You know how estate agents have a certain way of describing houses? "Deceptively spacious" means you couldn't swing a cat in it?

There's an American site about dogs which is like that. It's called dogtime.com and it's worth a look.
Beagle: "merry and fun loving, but being hounds, they can also be stubborn and require patient, creative training techniques".
Jack Russell Terrier: "lively, independent, and clever little dog. He’s charming and affectionate, but he’s also a handful to train and manage. For experienced dog owners only!"
For some reason their featured dog this week is the Xoloitzcuintli. "A wrinkled brow, squinty eyes, satellite-dish ears, a mohawk bisecting the top of the head, and a ratlike tail, not to mention the mostly hairless body, make the Xolo a dog that doesn't quite have the universal appeal of a Golden Retriever."

I honestly wouldn’t get either, both are hard work in their own way. Beagles are notoriously difficult to train and cockapoos little bundles of energy, they also fucking stink quite quickly as the fur underneath gets sweaty and dirty so they need regular grooming otherwise your house and everything in it will stink of dog and not in a good way.

I’d recommend you both think again and try to find a more appropriate breed,

Of course not, but it's heard of a lot with beagles that they're hard work.

I think it's mostly because people treat them like labradors or retrievers or spaniels. You can't train a scent hound in the same way you can train a retriever - it's counterproductive and will only frustrate the owner and confuse the dog.

If you want a beagle, read up on them. Yes they're cute and compact but they're bred to work and sniff and hunt - and they're bred to do all of that without once ounce of influence from any person. So when people come along and try and train them to trot nicely by their side, it's just not going to work. It's not in their DNA.

However if you work with them and do things like brain games and scent training, you'll find it's much more productive. Contrary to popular belief they don't need huge long runs to tire them out and actually for me it makes mine worse. Slow, sniffy walks followed by a chew on a bone has mine out for the count all day.

Hinestly, point 1 would be - don't get a puppy until you're out of the newborn stage and b. if it's you going to be doing most of the care/walking, you get to choose the breed, ultimately.

But don't do anything yet.

The person upthread who suggested whippet - very good shout.

Everybody has cockerpoos, so people who know little about dogs just automatically gravitate - they're taking over the world!

We used to have a Beagle. I loved her soooooooo much.

Ridiculously good natured and really friendly.

We got her when she was about a year old from a rescue though - so I think we had passed the point of being able to properly train a hard to train dog. I was the only one that let her off her lead and I only did it in a semi enclosed field. Even then, she wouldn’t come when you called her. Unless you shouted ‘biscuit’ and she would run back as fast as she could. Beagles are also pretty greedy.

I love them though. Not sure I’d get one again.

Do some research on owning a dog of any breed. A puppy and a three month old isn't an easy combination. You'll have a baby wanting floor play at the same time as house training your pup. Babies, toddlers and small children can be a great combination but having experience of those things on their own, never mind together is a challenge.

Cockapoos are overly popular which means they're overbred, not always by good breeders. You don't always get the best of both breeds, what you always get is a cross between two sensitive, intelligent and often highly strung breeds. You mention them not moulting much. This is one of the many myths about cockapoos, along with them being easy to train, always good with children etc. They can be lovely dogs but the temperament can be unpredictable. Cockapoos may moult less than some breeds (not guaranteed) but they love water, mud and need professional grooming every six weeks or so. I had a much loved cockapoo but he was a real challenge. Better get a miniature poodle or a spaniel to be honest.

Beagles are interesting dogs. You don't see many off lead, friends who own them say its because the breed has an independent approach, walks off and doesn't see why recall matters
You have to really want a dog to share your life with one. They need a lot of input in the early months (or years)

I know a Beagle, incredibly intelligent, very intense, but very very gentle. Not for the faint hearted, a bit ADHD in his case but he's a rescue so who knows what his early life was like.

Name change as this is outing...

We had a Beagle when I was a kid.

My dad brought him home from the pub, along with a box of Milk Tray that he’d won in a raffle.

Said a man had said that if no one took him that night, he would shoot the dog first thing (rural area, the dog was meant to be a working gun dog). Drunk dad thought it was a great idea. The man even gave dad his pedigree papers.

Mum wasn’t best pleased, but the story made her sad and so the dog stayed. It didn’t take long before she realised why the man wanted rid of it.

The dog, George, became incredibly attached to my mum but had awful separation anxiety. He chewed everything, for the first few years of my life all our internal doors were missing the bottom 4 inches.
He chewed through the fence and went for a wander around the village, where a local shopkeeper found him.

Rather than deliver him back to my mum, he decided to teach her a lesson about responsible dog ownership, and drive the dog to the police station instead. Only he didn’t want to go there til the morning, and he didn’t want to take the dog in his own house. So he left George shut in his car overnight.

When the shopkeeper woke up next day, he found that George the Beagle had completely chewed his way through the interior of the car, seats, seat belts, steering wheel, the lot.

The local paper printed the story, and from there The Sun picked it up. George became part of an anthology of tabloid dog stories entitled “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”.

George the Beagle was “The Bad”.

I think my sister has the newspaper clippings. It must’ve been mid-late 70s as there were lots of references made to the movie Jaws.

George loved mum and mum loved George (he slept under her bed and never chewed at all when she was with him) but he definitely wasn’t the ideal house pet, especially not with two small daughters.

When he died she got a border collie instead. Much easier.

The moral of this story is that an accidental beagle is probably not a good idea - best left to really experienced dog owners (or utter softies who don’t mind having the bottom four inches of their internal doors missing).

Does it have to be one of those two breeds, or couldn't you find one that you both agree on?

I don't know much about beagles but I wouldn't recommend cockapoos. My mum and sister and SIL all have one, and they're all the same. Nervous, intense, anxious and a nightmare to toilet train.

All dogs are hard work and need training but as the saying goes “the man with the lead in his hand and no dog in sight owns a Beagle” but they are soooo cute aren't they.

Beagles are scent pack hunting dogs, they like company and like hunting things down, leave em on their own and they'll destroy your home.

Personally, i don't think very young children and dogs are a great idea but i f i were have a dog again, i d get a Border terrier cross.

I had one and it would bite a lot, forgot how to not shit inside etc. No amount of walking would help. I re-homed her and I think the next owners had her put down, unfortunately.

That was your fault for not training your dog properly.

Someone suggested a tibetan terrier - we have had them in the family for years and they're an acquired taste. Wilful, headstrong, stubborn, funny, clownish dogs that need a lot of grooming and suffer with separation anxiety. Good for more experienced dog owners but you could get an easier breed as a first time dog owner