52 
Beagles and Beagling 
and behold, when the new owner went to his first 
trial both of his dogs were measured out! One of 
them stood sixteen inches at the shoulder and the 
other came very near to the seventeen inch mark. 
The previous owner disposed of the two dogs 
because they were too large for field trials and used 
this sharp method of disposing of them to a novice. 
The latter could have gotten his money back, no 
doubt, but since the dogs were both exceptionally 
good in the field he kept them and had many seasons 
of excellent sport hunting rabbits with them. As a 
matter of fact, I hunted over them myself on fre¬ 
quent occasions and never saw a better pair of 
rabbit dogs than these two over size, but typey 
beagles from Pennsylvania. 
When it comes to this question of size, the begin¬ 
ner, who is buying with the view of showing or 
running his dogs, must be very careful, but if he 
is buying for hunting purposes alone, then he need 
not draw the line so closely, for sometimes even a 
sixteen inch, well bred dog, that is a good individual 
in the field is a better one to breed to than a smaller 
individual with less quality, and when such are bred 
to small bitches or those coming from strains known 
to produce small ones, it is as like as not that most, 
if not all of this over-sized dog’s puppies will come 
within the prescribed bounds. 
It should be remembered also, that many a dog 
which goes a trifle below the fifteen inch mark at a 
year or even a vear-and-a-half old, will fill out by 
the time he is three years of age and sometimes 
then measure above the prescribed limit, hence it is 
not always the breeder who is at fault. He may 
