Hi everyone!

We bought a 4 year old beagle bitch (spayed) before christmas. She is well trained, will sit, lie, come, heel etc without any problems. She waits for command before eating her food, and is very gentle...usually. On several occasions recently she has snapped at myself and my husband. It happens when she is doing something she shouldn't be and ignores our commands. When we try to remove her from the situation she snarls quite horribly and will not let you anywhere near her. She retreats to her bed and we are not able to do anything with her for about 1/2 an hour. We are totally unable to discipline her. She has also started pooing & weeing inside at night, which we have not had before, even though she is let out just before we go to bed. My concern is for my children. I cannot trust the dog with them and feel that she will have to go. Any advice would be very gratefully recieved.

Oh dear. It sounds as is the 'honeymoon' period is over. :(

Rehomed/rescue dogs often go through a nightmare time once they feel reasonably settled. There are several books specially about rescue dogs in bookshops and petshops. It would be worth your getting as many of these as you can, as these dogs have their own set of problems.

In the meantime I would make sure she is not allowed upstairs, or on the furniture. Get her to sit, down or give a paw before she gets her food, or attention, or anything she wants. But don't be confrontational about it - be cheerful, amtter-of-fact and determined.

Why was she being rehomed in the first place?

Good luck.

Thanks for the quick reply!

The family that had her before us rehomed her because their other dog kept bullying her. We do think that this is her third family though, as she is trained almost to hunting standard, and the family we got her from didn't have anything to do with that!

We don't let her upstairs, on furniture etc, and this has not been an issue with her, she accepted it straight away. It is almost as though she is having a temper tantrum because she can't get her own way, and refuses to be told what to do!

It certainly sounds as though she's now pushing her luck - seeing just how far she's allowed to go. I feel that once she's realised that you're the ones in charge and there's structure and routine in her life she'll relax more and accept her place in your 'pack'.

Don't be either too soft or too stern with her - don't leave her unsupervised with children - and look for specialist books. Hounds can be very determined and bolshy anyway!

Hounds determined, yes.

Bolshy, not usual.

Aggressive, hardly ever.

There is some reason why this hound is behaving as it is, unless you had the hound from it's original owners and know them well I would ignore anything you have been told.

Hounds respond to gentle treatment.

Hard treatment will not get results.

If she has been clean and is now not, she is ill, very woried or totaly confused.

I agree - the honeymoon period is normally over a lot quicker than this - and a change in temperament combined with a change in other behaviour would need to be checked out by a vet before anything else is done (apart from not leaving her alone with children)

Having a long rope on her in the house helps with stopping her from doing what she is doing without actually having to touch her. You can stay far enough away from her but still interupt the bahaviour.

You say she's trained to hunting standard - has she got a tattoo in her ear? Or one that looks as if it might have been?

Jo and the Casblaidd Flatcoats

Yes there were some pack beagles stolen and not found a few years ago.

It could be that she was a pack hound and has found family life difficult, but I would still haqve her checked by a vet.