I thought Beagles were neat little dogs.  I used to have one when I was little, and she was good- natured and healthy, and she didn’t dig or bark a lot.  As a matter of fact, she hardly barked at all.

 So we got another Beagle five years ago, and he’s a piece of work!  While he didn’t bark for the first four and a half years, now all of a sudden he barks continuously.  It’s to the point where we had to buy a bark collar.  What’s more, he’s getting into the outdoor garden wall fountain, and he claws at doors, just ruining the door and moulding. 

All this getting into water wall fountains and barking at least takes place outdoors, but he’s also always had this weird psychosis about food, and that’s part of why he claws at doors.  From day one as a puppy he’s rushed in to his food and gulped it down in record time.  He must have been part of a large litter and so was raised with some food anxiety or something, but he knocks over ANYTHING in his path.   He jumps and squirms and cries and claws something terrible.  We’ve tried to train him to be calm to receive food, and he’ll settle, sit and not touch it if we’re right there threatening him, but we haven’t been able to relax on this in five years:  he just relapses into a sort of desperation behavior to get to his food if we aren’t vigilant about standing over him.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to solve this?

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