In Defence of Beagles

I have received overwhelming support from the dog bloggers community over the newspaper article on "Slow Dogs - Meet the World's 10 least intelligent dogs", which listed beagles in the list. Thank you dear friends for your comments and support for beagles.

I decided that it wasn't enough to voice my indignation about the article on my blog. So, last weekend, I sent the following e-mail to the Editor of the Weekender to present our views. Hopefully, this gets published so that readers of the paper do not get the wrong impression about beagles.


Dear Weekender Editor,
I refer to your article “Slow Dogs -Meet the world’s 10 least intelligent dogs” published on 11 October 2008. The article lists the Beagle as one of the “slow dogs”. As a beagle, I have a duty to defend my breed from being wrongly identified as a “slow dog”. The following points are my views and that of my fellow dog bloggers.

The criterion of “hardest to train” which was used to rank a dog’s intelligence is faulty. A dog that is hard to train does not mean that the dog is not intelligent. Yes, beagles are challenging to train. By nature, beagles are hunting dogs. This means that we are strongly governed by our nose and are easily distracted by scents. Unlike some breeds which are bred to work one-on-one with humans and have a strong desire to please their handlers, beagles are bred to work in a pack with other dogs. Hence, the desire to please our human handlers is a lot less. This leads to the perception that beagles are stubborn.

The challenge in training a beagle is using the right motivation tool. Beagle owners know that the one thing that never fails to motivate us is food. Beagles are intelligent and learn quickly when motivated. In fact, airports around the world use beagles as sniffer dogs to prevent illegal items from being smuggled into the country. This shows that beagles can be trained to provide service, if humans know how to motivate us. Of course, our intelligence can be a bane to our humans. Beagles are notorious for being escape artists because we are able to figure out how to get out from our enclosures - this requires both intelligence and agility. (I have escaped from my garden many times by scaling the fence, much to my humans’ chagrin.)

The article certainly does not do justice to beagles. Whilst I can understand that the title “Slow Dogs - Meet the world’s 10 least intelligent dogs” is certainly more catchy than “Meet the world’s 10 most difficult to train dogs”, it is incorrect and irresponsible to equate "difficulty to train" with "intelligence".

By Kess, the Beagle











P.S. My humans didn't have to teach me to carry my leash when going for walks. I learnt it myself.