Beagles

Harvey’s finest moment, he would tell you, was the chicken kiev. I’d just made the garlic butter and inserted it into the chicken breast when the phone rang. The call went on for a while, after which I returned. No chicken breast. ‘Must have put it in the fridge,’ I thought, and began to look. Only then did I glance across at the dog. His expression said: ‘You’re going to work it out in a moment, aren’t you?’

It’s the beagle’s defining characteristic: a yearning to become the widest animal known to man. ‘Taking candy from a child’ isn’t just a phrase for a beagle, it’s a way of life. Which can be a pity, as kids love them. For ages my partner and I struggled to work out why, until we twigged that Snoopy is a beagle. As is Gromit.

Adults also love them: a waiter once ran out of his Soho restaurant and chased us down the street to make a fuss of Harv. The adorability gets owners out of trouble when, for instance, your beagle pounces on a picnicking couple just as they’re taking a large quiche from its box. Not for nothing is Harvey known as ‘the Furry Dyson’.

Emphasis on ‘furry’, by the way — your average beagle sheds like a bastard. They also run off, and can tunnel out of even the most heavily fortified garden. They’re very good-natured, and don’t tend to bark much, but when they do everyone knows about it — the name comes from the Middle French bee gueule, meaning ‘wide throat’.

Actually it’s more of a howl than a bark, and we only hear it when Harv is afraid. He was a real lesson in male behaviour: the ones who make the most noise are the biggest cowards.