The psyche of a beagle

There once was a beagle. He was found wandering in a lane in Wales and was picked up and transported to a rescue centre in Buckinghamshire. Whilst he was there he found a home, however he wasn’t at the home for very long as he ran out of a gate and tried to play with cars. He was returned to the rescue centre. He then found himself whisked away once more, after 4 months or so, to another home. This time it was his forever home, although he didn’t know it at the time.

As he hadn’t had much in the way of socialisation or training he had to teach his new parents, pretty much from scratch, how to look after a beagle and pander to his every need. Things got off to a slow start and there were quite a few times that frustration got the better of everyone involved and sometimes there were some tears. However everyone knew they had to make the training succeed so they persevered, tried harder to understand what each other wanted and sought to find alternate ways of engaging with this beagle. After eighteen months or so, he started to settle in and feel a little more at home. He ran away three times in the first six months and each time he realised that it wasn’t very clever and it worried his parents very much as they were growing more attached to him as the days went by. The fears and doubts that had plagued him in his formative days in his new home gradually started to melt away as he realised that he was becoming more familiar with his house, the routine of the day and the parents he had chosen to look after him. His parents showed him love and guided him along the path toward some degree of normality in his life. Having said that there was still this distance in his eyes sometimes, that he was still not fully attached or that he was still not quite sure why he was here and what he was supposed to do. He still tried to escape at pretty much every opportunity and would regularly try to pull from the socket, the arm of whoever he was shackled to.

Then one day a nine month old rescue pup beagle was dropped into his world and it was like a hand grenade going off. For the first week of this new arrival, they fought and squabbled like a couple of feral children. In fact they fought and squabbled so much that it was close to his young pal being returned. However the situation relented and his new young protege was allowed to stay and flourish under the older beagles tutelage. Both beagles became familiar with one another, their surroundings and generally their lives together was becoming better. However the older beagle still showed signs of unrest on some occasions, usually when he was in the garden and being asked to come into the house for his food. Bribes or treats sometimes worked but on other occasions there was little that would sway him to consider returning indoors to eat his food. It was almost as if he felt that he was being trapped on occasion, whilst at other times, he would freely enter the house and join in with the ritual breakfast, dinner or supper inhalation.

Then the family moved to a new home and the younger beagle settled really quickly whilst the older beagle followed each of his parents around, in case they disappeared and he may be left an orphan once more. He would follow them from one room to another, stand directly behind them when food was being prepared, watch them whilst they were sitting down talking and would watch them from his bed when he should have been sleeping. Many of these time he could hardly keep his eyes open. His parents wondered and worried that he might still have something in his past that revisited his mind on occasion. They couldn’t work out what it was however they tried to make the routine simple immediately they had moved into the new home. After two weeks or so it appeared that the beagle in question had followed his brothers lead and started to relax and understand that his new surroundings were his home. However the older beagle then began regressing into old habits, where he would stand in the garden baying loudly, would refuse to come back into the house for food, would watch his parents as they went from one room to another and whine loudly if someone left the house. His parents wondered if they would ever understand the psyche of the beagle in question.

They decided that they probably wouldn’t so they would just give Dex love and comfort anyway.