The Beagle Lady

11/07/2025

16/06/2025

I am seriously missing these crazies! 😫😫

Just one more week to go until Daisy takes me for a walk and rolls in a dead fish on the beach 🐟🙈

And Pepper? She’ll spend four hours sniffing my mouth 👄 in case I dared to eat anything without her…

…then move on to sniffing my eyeballs. 👀

I keep telling her I don’t eat with my eyes 🤣

Happy Beagling,
Kellie

🐶 The Beagle Lady
💻 Online Beagle Trainer

📧 [email protected]

01/06/2025

My work is emotionally challenging. 🥺

I’d liken it to a therapist who, after hearing story after story, sometimes burns out,

…not because they don’t care, but because they care so deeply. 🥰

I can get burnt out too.

🤯 Th last few weeks have been particularly tough.

So many beagles…

🐶 Beagles with trauma-based anxiety and fear showing up as shutdown (hiding),

🐶 Growling to protect their personal space, for fear of harm or because they’ve had no experience with certain types of humans.

🐶 Biting to guard resources, because they had to fight for food or a safe place to sleep.

🐶 Clinging desperately to one person for fear of losing love.

🐶 And struggling to live alongside other dogs in the home.

I probably see more trauma cases than most behaviour trainers or behaviourists.

Why?

➡️ I work with beagles who come from puppy farms.

And because they’re strong-willed and tenacious, they’re more likely to have had punishment used on them.

Physical corrections, shouting, or worse — especially in some breeding environments.

➡️ I work with many ex-hunting beagles,

Mostly in the US, who were never treated as pets — just tools.

These dogs carry deep-rooted psychological scars.

➡️ Then there are the ex-street beagles from abroad.

Hypervigilant, easily triggered, and often quick to react with barking or biting.

➡️ And the ex-laboratory beagles

Those who have never felt love and who now hyper-attach to their new human, making separation distress heartbreaking to navigate.

🙏 I have so much admiration for people who adopt.

But the truth is, it’s rarely easy.

To take on one of these beagles, you need to be prepared.

🥸 If these beagles aren’t handled in a very specific way, their early trauma wires automatic responses in the new home that get stronger over time — not weaker.

😵‍💫 Take growling, for example.

If a beagle growls at someone out of fear of them coming over to touch them and that person backs away, it teaches the dog that growling works.

🙈 Over time, that behaviour can escalate to the point where they automatically growl at that person and block out any other information that might help them see the person as friendly.

When I work with growling, I start by making sure the beagle never has to growl at their caregiver in the first place.

👁️ We strip it right back to safe observation.

We allow the beagle to observe the person they’re unsure about.

No touching
No eye contact
No pressure — just being in the same space.

This teaches the beagle, slowly, that this person isn’t a threat.

❌ And during this phase, we don’t use treats.

They’re not in a learning space yet, they’re in survival mode.

They might still take the food (especially if food was scarce in the past), but it won’t always change how they feel.

That comes later. 😊

We start with nervous system regulation — relaxation, predictability, safety.

🍗🍖 Only then do we begin using food to build positive associations.

If you have a beagle from one of the above situations who is:

✅ toileting in the house,
✅ destroying things when left, ✅ growling at certain people,
✅ or reacting on walks.

Try not to see them as a “bad beagle.”

😔 They’re not bad.

😔 They’re traumatised.

😔 They’ve had a truly awful start in life.

Most have never lived in a home.

They have no idea how to feel safe yet, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get there.

It just takes time.

Real time.

And the right plan.

🙏 If you’re struggling — please don’t do this alone.

Getting help early can make all the difference. Especially if you’ve just adopted.

These beautiful beagles don’t just need love and patience.

They need understanding, structure, and a therapy approach that meets their emotional needs.

😊 And I’m here to help.

Happy Beagling,

Kellie

🐶 The Beagle Lady
💻 Online Beagle Trainer

26/04/2025

🧐 If you ask an old-school trainer what this meant in the picture below,

…they’d tell you Pepper was trying to assert dominance.

💪🏻 That she was claiming me, telling me she was the “pack leader,” and I needed to show her who’s boss.

And honestly?

🤦‍♀️ That kind of thinking still gets peddled today, and it’s so far off the mark.

Because this right here? ⬇️

This is my anxious girl choosing her safe place.

❤️ Sitting on my lap like this isn’t about control, it’s about comfort.

It’s her way of saying, “I feel more secure here.”

🌺 We were outside in the garden, and like so many beagles, Pepper’s brain 🧠 is always on.

Always scanning. Always sniffing. Always alert.

🧡 Sitting with me grounds her.

She can observe the world from a place of calm.

☺️ And if my lap is what helps her feel safe enough to settle?

👊🏻 Then that’s exactly where she belongs.

It’s not dominance.
It’s not manipulation.
It’s not bad behaviour.

It’s connection.
It’s trust.
It’s emotional regulation.

✍️ Let’s keep rewriting the story of what our beagles need,

…and how we can show up for them, just as they are.

Happy Beagling,

Kellie

🐶 The Beagle Lady
💻 Beagle Behaviour Coach

🌐 www.thebeaglelady.com/online-training

📅 Need help? Book a FREE 20-minute pre-training Zoom chat: https://thebeaglelady.as.me/

📧 [email protected]

18/04/2025

Why did I choose to just work with beagles? 🤔

My stock answer is:

“I couldn’t get a dog trainer to understand Daisy when I adopted her, so I learnt to be a dog trainer to train my own dog.”

🫶 But really, it’s something much deeper than that.

Something I’ve come to realise more fully over the last couple of years.

🐶🌼I realised very quickly that the traditional obedience training I’d been taking Daisy to wasn’t right.

🥺 I was asking her to change her personality.
🥺 To mask who she truly was.
🥺 Just so she’d fit into society’s expectations of how a dog should behave.

But the more I tried to train Daisy in that way, the more frustrated she became.

👉 Behaviours like pulling on the leash got worse, not better, because I wasn’t letting her be her true self.

👉 I was being told that my kind, caring, beautiful girl was trying to dominate me because she didn’t listen or do as she was told.

But I knew that wasn’t Daisy.

🥸 She was simply doing what she was bred to do: think for herself, follow her instincts, and be tenacious in getting what she wanted.

That wasn’t dominance. That was genetics 🧬. That was Daisy.

And no amount of traditional obedience training could undo her DNA.

🥰 So I started to truly understand her.

And with that understanding came a deep need to share it.

I wanted to shout from the rooftops that we have to stop trying to force a way of life on a breed that is so different from most others.

🧐 In 2022, I finally had an answer to why I had always felt different too.

Why I struggled with overwhelm in situations that didn’t seem to faze others.

Why I could hyper-focus on beagles for hours.

Why everything felt just a little too loud, too bright, too much.

🥳 I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD.

Not the stereotype.

Not the “naughty schoolboy” image.

My hyperactivity is internal.

🤯 A thousand thoughts a minute, a mind that rarely rests, and a nervous system that can easily get overwhelmed by light, sound, and too many moving parts.

😔 But just like the beagles I love so much, I spent years masking.

Trying to fit into a world that didn’t feel like it was made for me.

And just like them, I burnt out. Repeatedly.

But the more I allowed myself to be who I am -

🙌 Talkative
🙌 Passionate
🙌 Focused on beagles
🙌 Saying no more often to protect my peace
..the more I realised why this breed means so much to me.

It’s because they are kin. 💛🧡💛

They’re misunderstood, often forced to fit into boxes that leave them overwhelmed and confused.

They're told their instincts are bad.

That they’re stubborn. Wilful. Dominant.

But really?

They’re just doing what they were made to do.

💪 And now, I get to help them do it in a way that works for them, not against them.

I get to help their families see them through new eyes.

I get to help them feel understood, supported, and free to be themselves.

⛔ I don’t teach obedience training.

💝 I teach beagle training.

Which in a lot of respects is very different to what society wants in a dog.

🥸 For example — I don’t teach heel work.

Not the “head up, walk by your side, no sniffing, no pulling” style of walking.

🚶‍♀️‍➡️🚶‍♂️‍➡️ Instead, I teach you to let your beagle walk out in front of you if it’s safe to do so.

🐽 To let them decide where they want to go and sniff what they like (unless it’s into a bush — we all have our limits 😅).

We can absolutely teach them not to pull by using non-aversive equipment and heaps of patience.

But I also teach you that over-walking a beagle will often make them pull more.

🫨 That the hyperness you’re seeing isn’t a sign that they need more exercise or stimulation...

…it often means they need less.

Because beagles are not a cardio-first breed.

They are a scent-first breed, which means their brains 🧠 get overwhelmed and overstimulated really quickly.

Dog training isn’t about fancy equipment or ticking off a prescriptive training schedule.

It’s a two-step process:

1️⃣ Breed — Learn what they were bred for, how they think, how they work.
2️⃣ Personality — Is your beagle confident? Sensitive? Traumatised?

Pushing through “standard” training won’t work if we don’t understand their emotional needs.

☝️ It is not one-size-fits-all.

Training doesn’t work the same for every dog, no matter how many trainers you try or how many YouTube videos you watch.

That would be like saying every child can get straight As if they just study enough.

And that’s why I do what I do.

😊 Because after years of living, learning, masking, and unmasking... I get it.

I understand what it feels like to be misunderstood.

To feel “too much.”

To be expected to fit into a world that wasn’t built with your wiring in mind.

So when your beagle is overwhelmed, reactive, pulling, barking, not listening, stealing food or socks or your will to live…

…I won’t judge you.

I won’t blame them. 🥰

And I won’t tell you to “just be more consistent.”

🥸 I’ll help you understand exactly why it’s happening.

🥸 And I’ll teach you how to either train it, or manage it, in a way that works for your beagle, in your home, with your life.

😁 Because there is nothing a beagle can throw at you that I haven’t seen.

And there is always a way forward. 💛

28/03/2025

Want to work on training like Recall, Leash Pulling & Reactivity?

🎉Then let’s get cracking—with a 20% discount for the next 4 days!

🥰 Join the Beagle Coaching Mastery Support Group, where all my lovely clients hang out while training with me.

All the details of where to go are in the picture.

18/03/2025

Struggling with leash reactivity? The barking, lunging, pulling… the feeling that everyone in the neighbourhood is watching?

You’re not alone—and there’s still time to join me tonight to fix it! 🚶‍♂️🐶

⏰ Leash Reactivity Training – Tonight at 6 PM (UK time), 2pm EDT

Join me live and learn:

✅ Why traditional training doesn’t work for beagles
✅ How to actually change their reaction, or learn to manage it
✅ What to do before the walk to stop the madness before it starts

💡 BONUS: Sign up and get the recording PLUS extra training on:

🐶 Barking out the window & in the garden
🐶 Reading your beagle’s body language
🐶 Teaching calmness before the walk

You'll also get the recording of the training I held in February which teaches you how to walk a beagle the right way and stop any pulling if you have that issue too.

📌 Can’t make it live? No worries—you’ll get the recording so you won’t miss a thing!

💻 Sign up here: https://thebeaglelady.krtra.com/t/ZPLMdAhS48oQ

Happy Beagling,

Kellie

🐶 The Beagle Lady
💻 Online Beagle Trainer

14/03/2025

🌼 Daisy has been my constant in the sea of crazy beagles I’ve had since I adopted her eight years ago. 🥰

This photo was taken about eight weeks after bringing her home. She was two years old.

In those eight weeks, I’d been on a mission:

🐾 Reading everything I could about beagles

🐾 Watching hours of YouTube,

…and quickly realising that if I didn’t give her plenty of things to chew on, she would help herself to all of our belongings instead. 🙈

😱 I remember sitting like this with her, thinking, “Oh my god, she’s finally sitting down!”

But looking back, I realise I had inadvertently been teaching her calmness.

I hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon of advice from dog trainers and vets who insisted she needed more exercise and mental stimulation.

😩 Her behaviour was always worse after a walk, which made no sense to me at the time.

Then came the moment when the penny truly dropped…I was doing too much with Daisy.

🥺 It happened when she got limber tail.

It’s a painful condition where a dog’s tail becomes limp and unresponsive due to overuse, cold exposure, or muscle strain.

☔️ That day, I had taken Daisy out on a longline for over an hour in the cold, drizzly rain.

I felt awful. 😢

I had done this to my beautiful beagle, simply because I wasn’t properly educated about the breed.

🥸 That was the moment I knew all the advice about beagles needing lots of exercise and mental stimulation to stop hyperactivity and destruction was a load of bull crap!

🥸 So, I started researching scent work and its impact on the brain.

I learned that a 30-minute leash walk, where a beagle is only scenting, is the equivalent of three hours of off-leash scent work.

To help others understand- A beagle off-leash can both scent and run.

😳 This means a leashed beagle, focusing solely on scent work, accomplishes in 10 minutes what an off-leash beagle does in an hour.

Here is some math:

♦️ 30 minute leash walk = 3 hours of scent work.

♦️ 60 minute leash walk = 6 hours of scent work.

♦️ 2 hours of leashing walking in a day = 12 hours of scent work.

Evening hunting packs can’t do that amount of scent work daily.

They have rest days in between hunts. 😴

And all that mental stimulation makes our young beagles in particular hyper, wired, destructive, attention-seeking messes.

Just like a toddler who’s been at a play centre for hours, running on adrenaline and overtired.

🧠 After walks, Daisy needed help calming her overstimulated brain.

So, I gave her something to chew on—just like you might give a toddler a bottle of warm milk to settle them down after an exciting afternoon.

😴 Then, I made sure she got enough sleep and sometimes, I had to physically help her calm down—sometimes holding a leash attached to her to stop her from pacing and destroying things, which had been her old way of self-soothing.

😊 But she quickly learned that when I sat down, she could come and chill out too.

This transferred to the garden—where I’d pull up a chair beside mine, and she would sunbathe and snooze.

🥳 And before long, Daisy realised she loved this snoozing thing and started doing it all by herself while I pottered around the house.

Daisy was my inspiration for this page and the private group,

…and for me leaving my 18-year career as a 👮 police officer to become a beagle trainer.

People thought I was mad—friends, family, even other dog trainers.

😡 I even had trainers message me, telling me I was setting a bad example and that all dogs can be trained the same way.

🫡 But I knew beagles had been misunderstood for decades.

And that misunderstanding had made them one of the most rehomed breeds in the UK.

So, here I am, seven years later, with all of you to learn the real way, the better way, the beagle way of training. 🙌🙌

Daisy and I thank you. 🙏

And if you’re struggling, please let me know—I know exactly why your beagle is doing what they’re doing.

I’ve seen it all in seven years, and I know I can help you 😉

Whether it’s understanding your beagle better or adjusting your training so you see real success.

Happy Beagling,

Kellie (and Daisy)

🐶The Beagle Lady
💻 Online Beagle Trainer

Training beagles anywhere, anytime, all over the world 🌍

12/03/2025

🥰🥰 These two beauties keep me going through thick and thin.

Don’t get me wrong—they are most definitely not perfect!

🐶 Pepper drank the dregs of my coffee ☕️ this morning while I was in the bathroom,

…even though I thought I’d put it where she couldn’t get it!

🐶 And when I came back into the bedroom, my 10-year-old beagle, Daisy, was chewing her bed!

Life with a beagle is nothing short of eventful. 🤪

And as I explain to all my clients—there is no comparison between beagles and other breeds.

🐶 If you’ve had (or currently have) a dog that was bred to listen and please,

…you have to let go of that mindset when you have a beagle.

🙈 Beagles were never bred to listen or obey.

🙈 weren’t bred to please humans.

They were bred to be:

🐾 Single-minded in chasing their prey.

🐾 Resistant to outside distractions, so nothing stops them in their pursuit.

🐾 Lacking impulse control, so they just GO without thinking.

🐾 Pack-driven, treating us the same way they’d treat other dogs in their pack.

They are one of a handful of breeds that—95% of the time—do not naturally adjust their behaviour for humans,

…especially in adolescence (5/6 months to 18/24 months).

😉 When I help people with their beagles, 90% of the training is managing expectations.

You may never achieve:

❌ Obedience.
❌ Perfect recall (or any recall at all).
❌ A dog that listens and doesn’t jump on people or counters.
❌ A beagle that won’t steal food—because food triggers their hunting brain.

✅ Yes, some of you will achieve some or all of the above.

🐶 Daisy is pretty perfect at home, but her recall is hit or miss.

🐶 Pepper will steal food at every opportunity, but her recall is nearly 100%.

The key is looking at your individual beagle and figuring out:

✅ What you can and can’t achieve.
✅ How to manage or minimise behaviours.
✅ How to ditch obedience training and use “show, don’t tell” training instead.

So, what are you struggling with?

I’ll be brutally honest about what you can achieve,

…and what you’ll need to manage or minimise instead.

💪🏻We’re all in this together,

With the right understanding and training, you can enjoy a happy—but crazy—life with a beagle!

Happy Beagling,

Kellie

🐶 The Beagle Lady
💻 Online Beagle Trainer

06/03/2025

☀️🌿 Spring is in the air… for now! ☀️🌿

Yesterday, the sun was shining, and we hit a glorious 16 degrees (60 F) here in Guernsey. 🇬🇬

Perfect for a slower, more relaxed walk. 🐕 🚶‍♀️

Even Daisy was taking it easy!

🚽 She wasn’t scent-marking as much and didn’t scrape the ground after toileting.

A great sign that her hunting instincts are easing. 🐾

🩲 Of course, this is Britain, so the weather could switch faster than a fresh pair of knickers.

If the rain and wind return, Daisy will be back in full hunting mode. 🌧️🐕

🤗 If this lovely weather sticks around, I’ll be starting RECALL TRAINING next month!

But for now, we’re still working on LEASH PULLING and REACTIVITY this month.

🤔 Are you working on that with your beagle too?

Let me how it’s going! 😁

Happy Beagling,

Kellie

The Beagle Lady

Online Beagle Trainer 🐾

28/02/2025

‼️🚨🔔 This is a fake profile! Please do not engage with it. There is absolutely no association whatsoever to myself or my profession with this or any other accounts that you may see with my photos.
🤬We have blocked & reported. Please do the same if you can. Thank you 🐾

24/02/2025

🖊️ 📑 Dear Mr. Labrador Owner We Met on Our Walk Today,

😡 Your mumblings about me needing to “get control” of my barking beagle and just let them off the leash were really helpful—NOT!!

🤯 Daisy was barking because your Labrador was running around wildly at every dog it saw.

But in your eyes, he was just being friendly. 🙄

I couldn’t do my usual treat-based training to keep Daisy calm because I had to walk her away from your crazy Labrador.

🤔 Did you know that Daisy was on a leash because:

🐕 It’s hunting season, and her instincts are so strong that even a leg of lamb 🐑 wouldn’t make her come back.

🐕 She was off-leash yesterday on the beach, where she does have recall. But today, because she has arthritis, I couldn’t let her run around.

🐕 She barked at your dog, because she was pinned down by an off leash dog on a walk a couple of years ago, while she was on a leash.

Now, she finds leash walking stressful when she sees big dogs running at her.

🐕 I use retractable leashes because they allow me to handle two beagles safely.

Long lines need to be manually fed in and out, and that’s just not practical when walking two scent-driven hounds.

🐕 Did you notice that when I called Daisy to come close—despite being worked up—she came straight to my side on her retractable leash?

🙄 Meanwhile, you couldn’t catch your own dog.

🐕 And were my girls pulling me around like lunatics? Nope, because I’ve actually trained them not to pull.

Mr. Labrador Owner, I don’t have a typical obedience breed who is genetically wired to listen to me.

(Although, let’s be honest—your dog wasn’t exactly listening to you either while you shouted at it.)😬

I have a hunter who scents, whereas your breed is all about running and chasing, which is why they run around like crazy things.

🥸 I’m a responsible owner who knows when and where I can let my girls off-leash—and that I have complete control over them.

I’m not going to let my beagle off-leash just to disappear for an hour tracking a scent. 😱

And no, not every breed can be taught recall if you just train hard enough.

😳 That’s like saying every child can get an A* in their exams if they study hard enough.

Total codswallop!

…And rant over.

Even The Beagle Lady gets unsolicited advice from other dog breed owners!!!