When I was a military dependent living on a small Naval Communications Station near Andrews AFB as a 14 year old, there was a really cute girl (She was out of my league and age range, but she had nearly every guy following her around)
Her father was either a Chief or a Warrant Officer (I can’t remember which) and he raised beagles. He kept several dozen of them in a fenced in enclosure that went around a water tower on the base, and she had to go down each day with buckets of dog chow to feed them.
I just wanted to find a way to go with her, so I offered to carry the buckets of dog chow the several hundred yards from her house...adolescent boys are really so easily manipulated...:) Of course, being no fool, she readily agreed with a flirtatious smile at this young, gorky guy with BCD (Birth Control Device) black plastic glasses!
What I remember most is, nearly as soon as we began walking down there, there was no way they could have seen us coming, but they began baying, howling, and yodeling wildly in an insane chorus! It was incredible!
As I think of it now, I wonder if they somehow smelled the dog chow, or if they heard the screen door...I don’t know, but you could hear it all over the base!
They can hear and smell things a mile away, easily.
Few things are as beautiful as the belling of hounds.
Though my last Ibizan Hound passed away almost 2 years ago, my current Dobe was “raised” by her and even now, when he starts an alarm/alert bark, sometimes he “channels his inner hound” and begins with a bay, instead.
It’s funny to see him stop like “Where the hell did *that* come from??”
When I leave the room, he howls and sounds like a one-Dober-man pack of mournful hounds, a’baying.
Nature and nurture collides...he has an “accent”.
:)