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Pup nobody wanted is now top dog among hunting beagles

John Brown (left) and Joe Brown pose with Halfway Annie B, the United Kennel Club’s  2010 Hunting Beagle World Champion.
John Brown (left) and Joe Brown pose with Halfway Annie B, the United Kennel Club’s 2010 Hunting Beagle World Champion. Photo by Cindy Klepper.

Originally published Oct. 25, 2010.

A year ago, Annie was the pup nobody wanted.

This month, she's the top dog.

Halfway Annie B, as she's formally known, outhunted all the other dogs in the race to become the United Kennel Club's 2010 Hunting Beagle World Champion.

"That's about the biggest you can win," says an obviously pleased Joe Brown, who handled Annie during the competition held Oct. 1-3 in Bridgeport, WV. He and his dad, John Brown, both of Huntington, own Annie and about a dozen other hunting beagles.

"This is a dog that nobody wanted," John says.

Annie was the last in a litter bred by Dan Barton, of Andrews, who was asking $200 for the then-six-month-old puppy. John offered Barton $100 and five bags of dog food, and went home with the dog.

"We won about $4,000 to $5,000 worth of prizes," Joe says, including a shiny silver dog crate where Annie can ride in style.

The hunting competition is just that - hunting. There's no killing of the rabbit involved, Joe explains. The dog gets points for finding and circling rabbits during a specified time period, in this case two hours, and the points are totaled to determine a winner. At the UKC World Championships, the winning dogs come back to hunt another day.

"About 500 dogs try to get into the world hunt," Joe says, which is open only to those who qualify through earlier hunts. "There were 194 dogs in West Virginia on Friday, 32 on Saturday, and four on Sunday ... As long as you keep winning, you go on."

And Annie kept winning. John, who was unable to attend the event, was back in Huntington, waiting for word on how she'd done, but spotty phone service at the hunt site kept him mostly in the dark.

"I was pacing the floor, waiting for phone calls," John says. "Then a friend called and said she'd won."
The win lands them on the cover of an upcoming edition of The American Beagler magazine.

Annie was 16 months and four days old when she won the worlds, John notes. Her mother, also handled by Joe, had finished fourth in the same competition in 2008.

The Browns and their Halfway Kennels have also won two other major competitions this year, but not with Annie. They took The Eliminator in Oakland City with Halfway Molly's Mr. T, and won the nationals with Mr. T's mother, Halfway Mark V's Molly.

John says he's been participating in beagle hunting competitions for about 20 years, a hobby Joe - then 12 or 13 years old - at first found boring.

"Then he got his first dog," John says. "That's about all it took. He was hooked."

The pair has since hunted in contests from Missouri to Maryland.

It's not hard to train a beagle to hunt, John says. They instinctively recognize the scent of a rabbit and know it's their job to give chase.

"We can take just about any dog and teach them to run a rabbit," John says.

"The dogs basically train themselves," Joe adds. "It's up to us to fine tune them."

John says they put "a lot" of time into working with the dogs.

"I used to run dogs seven days a week," John says. "I'd get up, run the dogs, and go to work. On weekends I'd run twice a day."

Joe says he probably puts in 30 hours a week working with the dogs.

"It's just a hobby," Joe says. "It's something we enjoy doing."

The Browns plan to breed Annie to last year's UKC Hunting Beagle World Champion, a dog by the name of Branco's Chubby Checker, owned by Roy Swafford of Michigan. The breeding of back-to-back champions rarely happens, they say, mainly because male dogs rarely win the title. The last time back-to-back winners produced offspring was in 2000 and 2001, and the Browns got a dog - Molly - from that litter.

John says he'll probably keep a puppy from Annie's litter. The rest will be sold, but John plans to keep the price within reach of most beagle hunters.

"I want the working man to be able to afford a pup," he says.