Do Beagles Make Good Water Dogs?


I’ve had a lot of different experiences with a lot of different hounds and this is one question that isn’t easily answered yes or know.  They will tolerate a bath or a shower, but it’s pretty rare for them to be excited by it (Flower being our one exception). When it rains, they definitely don’t want to spend time in the outdoors, but they also love that all of the scents have been washed away and any fresh scents especially pop so they’ll play in the rain if they have been cooped up all day.

When it comes to the beach, lakes and rivers they will be cautious around the water, but they get so stimulated by the outdoors that they will quickly get over any fear and dive right in if you let them.  In that sense they are great water dogs like Labrador retrievers are, but take away the high value treat of an adventure in the wild and they are big babies when it comes to showers. 

I always try to make bath time as fun as possible.  We’ve experimented with dog baths, but that pretty much only makes it easier for you.  Mostly we try to make the drying off experience as much fun as possible. Whenever they get done with their showers and they are about to be reintroduced to the pack, they get really excited because their scent has changed and can’t wait to go rough house with each other.  All of my hounds have always done this, it’s a really funny thing to watch.