Tailtip´s Eyeful-Boy
23 March 1985 - 8 April 1998

Sniff's name is easy to understand. It means exactly the same in swedish as in english.
Besides it suited him perfectly, because sniffing was what he spent most of his time doing.

Tarr Hill Rollikin Romeo	Navan's Triple Trouble Rick	Kings Creek Triple Threat
		Navan's Penny A Go-Go
	Pixshire's Fancy-Free	Kings Creek Triple Threat
		Busch's Dixie Duplicator
Starmaids Flower-Maid	Little John	Barvae Starmaker
		Violas Kamilla
	Starmaids Courtney-Maid	Tarr Hill Rollikin Romeo
		Starmaids Bold-Bluemaid

In the beginning Sniff was my sister's dog. He was the next puppy in line after the death of our old friend Fajt. In fact she wanted a dog from the same breeder as last time, but all his bitches misscarried, so instead she decided to buy him from Tailtip's kennel in Uppsala.
Sniff was the smallest pup in the litter and probably he got chosen just for the reason that he was so tiny and cute. He did not weigh much more than a meal-bag at 8 weeks of age, when he was delivered, and some of my sister's acquaintances belived he would turn out to be a so-called "pocket-beagle" when he grew up. But in the end he took back what he had been missing from the start and became a perfectly normal young hound.
Sniff was tremendously cared for, admired, beloved and fussed with. He could never really reconcile with the fact that there came other dogs to the family - this meant he would lose the benefit of his owner's complete attention - but he had to accept his misfortune...a bit sullen, but not very much.
He was a gentleman with his own ideas considering everything in his life. He was a stubborn and obstinate creature. When he did not get his will through, he used to sulk very expressively.
He loved his food and - if it was possible - he would not even refrain from stealing it. We had to watch him well and be careful not to leave anything edible on the table. He could easily get up on the zink via the the wooden bench in the kitchen and then he drove my sister almost insane by chewing up all of her wooden butter-knives. Finally there was not a single wooden butter-knife left...and glasses and plates fell frequently to the floor and got broken. At such occations Sniff was threatened to be cooked and FED TO THE POOR HUNGRY CATS, but he did not take the threat too seriously. It was a risk worth taking, he thought.

He took part in many adventures when his still was in his prime - journeys, canoe-trips and mountain tours with his master and some friends of his.
He was also trained in obedience and agility by his mistress and else he got activated in many different ways, for example by pulling a tiny little cart, carry a knapsack and do tricks such as "roll over" and "seek".
Sniff was good at agility, but he never competed. If so, he would probably not have been very succeessful - just as the time he was entered in an obedience trial i Gothenburg. Suddenly he decided to forget everything he knew and his master was very angry when he left the plane with his absent-minded dog. My sister bought him a textile mark with the picture of hippopotamus and the name Sniff embriodered on it. No more competing for him that day, because everyone had had enough.
Neither he was a show dog, to my sister's great disappointment. Merely looking at his exterior, he was not representative for his breed, but in his mind he was a real beagle - no one ever could deny that simple fact.

Sniff was one of the first beagles in Sweden with hip dysplasia - a heritage from his father, the imported american stud-dog. Only one of his hips was slightly seized and it never did seem to bother him, but of course it excluded him from being a stud himself...I doubt it was ever planned.
When he was about two years old, he was furthermore diagnosed with a malfunction in his thyroid gland. He got grey hairs very early in life, a lot of loose skin around his neck and his body temperature lowered. This condition is usually normalized with a medicine called Levaxin, but Sniff did not respond at all. He did not suffer from this illness either, but he became a bit boring and slow.

As I have already mentioned, the family slowly increased. The first one to move in was Skutt, a beagle, who was (a bit reluctantly) placed under Sniff´s protection, after him two weimaraner girls and finally a human boy was born. My sister got very occupied and Sniff slipped away to his corner and sulked. He did not enjoy his walks any more - at last he was mostly sleeping and did not want to leave the house, or at least not the garden. He had totally lost his will to live. It was then we took him over... as an effort to keep him alive.
Maidi had just left us, so there was a huge empty space for him to fill, and the move seemed to cheer him up a lot. He got happier and more harmonious almost at once after his arrival. At that time his was 9,5 years old, with the looks of a soft little teddy bear.
He never again got to be the only dog, as in the glorious days of his early youth, but he stayed with us until he was 13 years old and I believe he had a good life.

OBITUARY