Uno the Beagle Wins Best in Show at the Westminster Dog Show

We watched the Westminster Dog show starting on Tuesday night and one of the first dogs that came out and struck us as energetic and enthusiastic was the 15 inch beagle Uno. He was friendly, alert, and had such good coloring. When he strutted his tail was wagging the entire time. He appeared to be such a good natured dog, very attentive and extremely happy to be where he was. I told my husband that I thought that he would get close to winning the whole show.

When my children were young we had a pair of beagles ourselves, Chester and Elizabeth. They were such a joy to be around. Chester was the livelier one of the two. We had a fenced yard and they would go out to play and run in the yard. Chester would catch the scent of squirrel and he would run along the fence trying to catch the squirrel. There were a few squirrels that learned rather quickly that Chester could jump and they lost some of their tails to Chester. Chester would bring the piece of tail that he had confiscated from some poor squirrel to our door to tell us what a good hunter he was. He was such a funny dog. He was always good with the kids, he liked to play ball with them, when they would come home from school. And he would play until he got tired and would lay under one of our trees, snoozing and napping away on his back with his paws in the air.

Elizabeth on the other hand was a bit more laid back, she would like to romp in the yard with Chester, but she would tire faster and would just like to rest in the sun. Her little paws stretched in front and back thinking she was the queen of the yard. She was the one who would liked to climb into bed with you at night and cuddle by your side, she was the one who wanted to have her own pillow and blanket when she went to sleep. She would drag that blanket around if we were in the den by the fireplace and cuddle up with it.

They were easy to maintain, Elizabeth would sit for an hour and let you comb her fur, she would actually fall asleep when you stroked her ears, Chester would want you to finish in a hurry, because he wanted to investigate everything in the house. His nose was always to the ground sniffing out things to play with.

They hardly would be called barking dogs, however if a stranger tried to come up to the house they were better than an alarm system. They would let us know if it was a stranger or a friend. And heaven help me if the ice cream truck came by, they liked their vanilla ice cream during the summer, and we had to stop the ice cream man to get them their softie on summer evenings. Chester would let me know when my husband came home from work, he would hear the car come up and the door close, and he would be the first one at the door to meet Ray as he entered the house. He was the one who wanted to go for a walk with Ray through the woods, Elizabeth went along just because Chester led the way and she didn't want to be left alone.

They were great dogs and we had 14 years with Elizabeth and Chester lived for almost 16 years. They are buried in our back yard, where they loved to lay and play. We miss them a lot, they were great companions.