Are Beagles Good Service Dogs?

Beagles can mesmerize anyone with their innocent charm, expressive eyes, and adorable ears. They are friendly, fun-loving, and highly-energetic dogs that can fill anyone’s life with colors of love, happiness, affection, and loyalty. Besides this, they are also considered as an ideal pet for a family.

Some people bring pets into their lives for seeking endless love and companionship whereas some people do so for security purposes. The question that pops up here is whether Beagles are good service dogs or not. Let us find out!

Owning to their compassionate persona and excellent hunting skills, Beagles are considered to be good service dogs in the field of emotional therapy and work as well. However, Beagles are not much efficient for physical disability services. These furry pals are good at providing emotional support along with assistance in sniffing out the concealed things.

Over time, service dogs have garnered much popularity, all thanks to their resourceful assistance and participation in versatile service arenas. They came into the limelight when the world realized their potential for accomplishing work and emotional therapy services with flying colors.

Although, Beagles are not good at physical disability services these furry companions excel at other pivotal service fields. If you want to recognize Beagle as a service dog, then the below-mentioned information would surely help you out!

Personality and Traits of a Beagle

The potential and capability of serving as service dogs depend hugely upon the personality and specific traits of each dog breed. Let us understand this through a simple example. If a dog is less likely to get mingled or familiarize, then he or she cannot be good at providing emotional support to the people whereas if a dog is excellent at sniffing, and guarding, then it can be good for work and physical disability services.

Beagles bear a resemblance to Great Dane in terms of personality. They are intelligent, gentle, amiable, cheerful, loving, and highly affectionate. Being a notorious dog breed, Beagles tends to sniff and explore all the possible things nearby them. However, Beagles are also known for their excessive loud barking and lack of obedience.

They were originated as hunting dogs but later on, people across the globe adapted them as an ideal family pet, the credit for which goes to their friendly and charming persona. Beagles possess excellent sniffing and hunting skills that help them to find out even the finest concealed objects that are out of reach for humans.

Energy Level of a Beagle

Beagles are small in size but they are notorious. They have high energy levels as compared to the other dog breeds in the segment. Also, they have a habit of roaming around and exploring all the possible things that are reachable to them. They need regular exercise and walk for about one hour daily to stay fit and healthy.

Diverse Service Fields

Whenever we talk about service dogs, people often relate it to the involvement of the dog in providing useful assistance services to police and the army. Well, one cannot completely deny such stereotypes but the segment of serving as a service dog is a lot bigger than this.

There are mainly three service areas in which dogs can serve namely; Work, Emotional/Therapy, and Disability Services. Each of the services requires a specific trait to pursue the operations. If we talk about Beagle, they are better at work and emotional/therapy services as compared to the disabled ones.

Let us understand each segment to conclude whether Beagles can contribute as good service dogs or not.

Contribution of Beagles in Work Services

The work services include providing assistance to the police force and army as sniffer dogs. Under this segment, the duty of the service dog is to sniff out bombs, illegal drugs, highly concealed foreign substances, and many more.

In short, under the work services, the dog has to carry out the sniffing activities efficiently. Under this segment, the dog would render his services to police force, premier security organizations, airport authorities, and border control.

Considering the fact that Beagles are great sniffers, they are able to accomplish the above-mentioned activities effortlessly and effectively. They can even sniff out the simple things at home to the exceptionally veiled objects with the utmost ease. Seeking to their origin as a hunting dog, Beagles have a great sense of smell along with excellent tracking skills.

This remarkable potential of Beagle makes them an ideal dog breed for work services. You would mostly find them at airports, sniffing the foreign objects associated with agriculture and drugs.

Apart from this, Beagles are even used for detecting infestation and cross-contamination at the international level. They also help in preventing the illegal trafficking of prohibited things. On the other hand, even the nationals and workforce seek assistance from Beagles.

Beagles are small in size along with the incredible sensory potential. Besides this, they seem to be less fear-provoking as compared to the other dog breeds. That is why Beagles are amongst the top choice for the service dogs at the airport. Therefore, we can say that Beagles are good at work services due to their potential of sniffing, and intelligence.

Contribution of Beagles in Emotional/Therapy Services

With the busy lifestyles becoming more usual, people are more likely to experience stress, tension, anxiety, fear, and depression. This tends to strike an imbalance in the emotional and mental state of mind amongst the majority of the people.

Apart from this, most people even register their pets as service dogs without any genuine reason to take their pets along with them while traveling through an airplane. However, this trend is not only limited to this fancy purpose.

Those dogs who serve as emotional/therapy service dogs help those people who are suffering from phobias, mental, and emotional health disorders. Such dogs provide comfort, affection, and emotional support to ease the suffering of the people. It tends to stable the state of mind and provides a sense of security to people.

Beagles, being super joyful, friendly, and adoring are touted to be perfect for this sort of service. These furry munchkins shower endless love in the lives of people that makes them a perfect companion for healing people from emotional traumas.

Besides this, Beagles are ideal for living in families with kids because they tend to relish socialization. Being energetic, and playful furry companions, Beagles tend to get familiarize and attached to their owners very quickly as compared to the other dog breeds.

Beagles are small, super adorable, and compassionate living beings that can easily accompany their owners, and their jolly persona is effective in distracting people from encountering mental and emotional stress. During times of distress, owners need love, cuddles, emotional assistance, and support which only a loving pet could give them.

Generally, Beagles are smart and intelligent enough to sense when their owners are feeling low or stressed and need their love, affection, and support. From this, we can easily conclude that Beagles are suitable for serving as an emotional/therapy service dog.

Contribution of Beagles in Disability Services

For this field or service, the dogs are professionally trained and then registered for the same. Under this, the dog has to offer assistance to those people who are suffering from any sort of chronic health ailment or physical disabilities. The dog also helps the owner to move on in life and also plays an important role in alerting others in case if the disabled owner encounters any type of accident.

Under this segment, the service dog has to support and assist diverse types of disabilities such as blindness, mobility problems, deafness, diabetes, autism, cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and the list goes on. The main role of a service dog is to protect their owners from dangers and secure them whenever something goes wrong. They even provide guidance to their owners who are suffering from any sort of disability.

The pivotal criterion for becoming a disability service dog is that the pet should be bigger in size so that it can rescue the owner in times of distress. Beagles are small in size that is why they are not considered to be ideal for this service field. 

The reason behind the mandatory criterion is that the dogs that are bigger in size would be able to carry their owner during alarming situations. Beagles are too small to do that. Also, the Beagles easily get distracted by the social communications and familiar/unfamiliar scents that make it pretty much difficult for them to sense whether their owner is feeling well or not.

Although, Beagles have a great sense of smell and they are attentive too, but they easily get diverted and might not be completely aware of the owner’s condition. The other reason is that Beagles are highly active and energetic dogs; they hardly stay in one place.

People with physical disabilities cannot walk much faster. That is why a dog that has lower energy levels and is less active is recommended for this sort of job. Such type of dog would match up the pace of the disabled owner better than a highly active dog such as a Beagle. Therefore, we can say that Beagles are not suitable for disability services.

Wrap Up

After going through this blog, it has become quite clear that Beagles are good for work, and emotional/therapy services. They do not possess the qualities that are required to become a disability service dog.

However, Beagles have great qualities but at the same time, for becoming a service dog, it is advisable to train your pet for effective results.