I had a friend who initially got a beagle to be a hunting dog. In short order, Miss Lucy was sooo spoiled that there was no way his baby was going hunting - she might get hurt o something! So he decided that a second dog would just have to come into the household, and got another beagle pup. This one, very sadly, died just weeks after he got it, the vets think it was a heart problem, poor thing. So there they are with one spoiled princess of a beagle and no "hunting" dog. Then one day a friend showed up at his door with a gangly yellow Lab pup in his arms. "Jake" was the last puppy in a box of puppies he had run accross somewhere and he KNEW my friend needed this dog. Well, here was their "hunting" dog. He contacted a school to ask how old the pup had to be to train for such things, etc. Except before Jake ever got to a class, my friend figured out that he, too, was never gonna make it as a hunter. Jake, sad to say, doesn't have an ounce of hunting instinct in him. They'd walk past a pond full of ducks every day, and Jake would get really excited - about the water. The duck weren't even there as far as he was concerned, he'd bound right through them to go splash! At that point, my freind decided that he just wasn't meant to have a "hunting" dog!