Summer Misadventures part 1: Beagles Can Jump

When we first got Junebug as a puppy, she loved to jump. Our baby gate strategy for keeping the dogs in the back half of the house with us would not work with the Bug. She happily jumped over the gate, even if it meant landing on a bin behind it. And if we put the gate up high enough she could not jump it, then it was high enough that she could wriggle underneath it.

But at some point in there, maybe about the time we got Larry, I am not sure, Junebug forgot she could jump, or, I should say, she forgot she could jump OVER things. She knew she could jump up on pub-height chairs to get to the dining room table, but she forgot she could go over anything.

Until this summer.

At five years old, my Beagle remembered she could jump.

It started with Larry. He has always known how to jump- he doesn’t need the chair to make it to the dining room table. He goes over dog park fences without a thought. Luckily, he desperately wants to be with us, too, so while he may go over a fence, it doesn’t take much (simply walking a few steps in another direction) to get him to come back.

Anyway, one day at the dog park, they could hear and smell something on the other side of the fence. Larry went over. Junebug desperately wanted over, too, and it all came back to her.

Remember how I wrote my tips for a better recall? Confession time- neither of those work on my Beagle when she’s got a scent she’s tracking. There simply is no recalling Junebug when she’s on the hunt. That’s on us, on our lack of training her with sufficient distractions. I accept that. It also means it is my job to mitigate the danger she could be in.

There have been more than a few times when I have chased her and Larry over trails and rough ground after they have made their escape. Larry is usually pretty easy to catch. Again, he wants to be with me, so he’ll happily come “check in” while they are out running around, and I can get a leash on him. There is no getting a leash on the Bug unless she’s ready to be done.

The one saving grace of the summer is that Junebug has an excellent memory. More than once she has gone over a fence in an area where I cannot follow her, but she remembers where she went over and that is where she will return to.

One time, she went over in a place where I could not get over/get to where she ended up from the spot she went over, but thought I might be able to get to her via a roundabout way. So, I put Larry on leash and we went trekking through the underbrush, crossing the stream at its narrowest point, and trying to get to where Junebug had been. The process took so long that she got bored of what she was doing and went back to where she had gone over the fence.

This resulted in me learning something this summer. I can definitely tell the difference between Junebug’s “I’ve found something” Beagle-ing bark and her “something is wrong” bark. Because she made it back to the fence where, in her mind, I should have been, and I was not there. Something was definitely wrong.

And here we run into the other fun part of her remembering how to jump. She remembers how to jump over the fence to get out of the dog park. She does not remember how to jump over a fence to get back in the dog park. Instead, she looks to me to lift her back over.

So, this summer, more than once I have spent at least thirty minutes tracking the dogs along trails through woods and grassy valleys, trying to get the Bug back. I have also stood (or sat, when it was possible) next to fences for 45 minutes waiting for her to get tired, want a drink, whatever it is that brings her back to the fence to tell me she is done (at least for now), and I can get a leash on her.

It has led to having a tired and happy Junebug. Sometimes it had led to a tired and happy Larry, though often he’s instead ended up on leash and is not tired, or happy.

As for me, I can only hope that sometime over the winger, she will once again forget she knows how to jump.