Beagle Hound - Jacqueline Des Clayes - 14"H x 11"W

Beagle Hound - Jacqueline Des Clayes - 14"H x 11"W

The Beagle is a small-sized scent hound, developed primarily for hunting hare. With a great sense of smell and their tracking instinct, the Beagle is employed as detection dog for prohibited agricultural imports and foodstuffs in quarantine around the world. The Beagle is intelligent but single-minded.

Although beagle-type dogs have existed for 2,500 years, the modern breed was developed in Great Britain around the 1830s from several breeds.

Beagles have been depicted in popular culture since Elizabethan times in literature and paintings. Snoopy of the comic strip Peanuts has been promoted as "the world's most famous beagle".

Dogs of similar size and purpose to the modern Beagle can be traced in Ancient Greece back to around the 5th century BC. Xenophon, born around 430 BC, in his Treatise on Hunting refers to a hound that hunted hares by scent and was followed on foot. Small hounds are mentioned in the Forest Laws of Canute which exempted them from the ordinance which commanded that all dogs capable of running down a stag should have one foot mutilated.

William the Conqueror brought the Talbot hound to Britain. The Talbot was a, scent hound derived from the St. Hubert Hound which had been developed in the 8th century. At some point the English Talbots were crossed with Greyhounds to give them an extra turn of speed. Long extinct, the Talbot strain probably gave rise to the Southern Hound which, in turn, is thought to be an ancestor of the modern-day Beagle.

Miniature breeds of beagle-type dogs were known from the times of Edward II and Henry VII, who both had packs of Glove Beagles, so named since they were small enough to fit on a glove, and Queen Elizabeth I kept a breed known as a Pocket Beagle