Beagle Fever

I’m not sure when it happened. It just did. We didn’t mean for it to happen. After all, prior to getting Sahara, I never wanted a beagle…until I did. Sy always wanted a Corgi, until his comment about living in the country and being able to get more beagles. The thing about his comment, I wouldn’t mind moving to the country to get another couple beagles either.

That was when I realized, we’ve become beagle people.

Though we love all of our dogs, Sahara and Toby have a special place in our hearts. Perhaps it is Sahara’s playfulness and endearing (annoying) dramatic fits. Perhaps it is Toby’s soulful eyes that just asks us to love him and nothing more. We don’t know, but the beagles have taken over.

It’s not just the humans that have Beagle Fever, Orion and Eevee have developed it as well. When the beagles bay, it means something interesting is going on and Orion and Eevee run to wherever the beagles are to see what is going on. Frequently, I see Eevee pretending to be a beagle herself and tracking scents with Sahara and Toby. We now refer the three of them (Sahara, Toby, and Eevee) as the three heads of Cerberus, or simply Cerberus.

I didn’t realize how bad Orion has it either until I was playing dog howls the other day.

We’ve been watching Mother’s dogs Ebony and Marleigh, mother’s husky puppy (more on her in another post). Marleigh doesn’t howl. I can’t get her to howl with me. So I decided to play videos of dogs howling to get her to howl. It didn’t work. I then played the howls to see if Orion would howl. He didn’t care about any of them until I played a video of a beagle baying. He stood up and watched the TV intently, waiting to see what had this beagle so excited. Once it was over, he went back to not caring about the other dog howls.

I don’t know how to explain the feeling that I had when that happened. Dumbfounded is probably the best way to sum it up. Sy and I were dumbfounded. We just witnessed our dog filter out (i.e. not even bothering to acknowledge) the noise of other dogs (huskies, wolves, cocker spaniels, and a fox terrier) and only respond to an alerting beagle. My guess is that the beagle was the only thing relevant. Maybe, in his mind, the other dogs were just talking to hear themselves talk; that their words were meaningless and didn’t apply to his current circumstances. However, the beagle has something to say; something to show; something to actually talk about. I don’t know. I’m just guessing.

Yesterday, Sy and I, even “joked” about getting a third beagle to mask that we have a BUNCH (7, well currently 9) dogs. We’d just tell people: “We have three beagles so sorry about all of the noise. They just don’t know when to quit.” No. No. No. Don’t even think about it. Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.

That’s all I have for this post. Sorry if it didn’t make any sense. I just write these as streams-of-consciousness sometimes without worrying too much about it. I do have a few more posts in mind, but with my track record, I probably won’t post anything for another month.

Anyway, until next time…if your beagles siblings tell them there is a possum in the tree, believe them. There is a possum in that tree.