Have you heard the phrase, a barking dog never bites? We borrowed it way back from the 16^th century, when it was first recorded in the English language.[i] It gives you a glimpse into an aspect of Kyo’s personality. Kyo is one of the protagonists in the story. And he is a Beagle.

The word Beagle may have come from the French word beugler, which means to bellow—a connection that we simply cannot ignore, because Kyo sure can bark. And that’s exactly what Kyo did when he first saw Obi—he barked!

—“A sunbeam stretched, all the way, through the leaves of the mango tree and caught Obi in its light. Kyo could see Obi, and he glared at him and barked.”

Nice way to greet someone, isn’t it?

No bite followed the bark. There was, however, a sniff.

Is that what all the barking dogs do, they sniff? In which case, we will paraphrase and say, barking dogs never bite, they sniff.

This was instinctively what Kyo did—most likely, a biological inheritance from his 5^th century Greek, scent hound ancestors. [ii] While Kyo is not out Beagling or hunting for hares, like his ancestral kin, his instinct to sniff still makes his scent receptors—over 200 million to be precise[iii]—tickle his moist little black nose.

—“He (Kyo) sniffed at Obi and started to wag his skinny long tail enthusiastically.”

Kyo had sniffed out a friend. And it wasn’t a human. It was a dot. Kyo soon became the dot’s best friend.

We will make you meet Obi, the dot, in the next post. Hope you enjoyed saying hello to Kyo.

Information sources

[i] https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/barking-dog-never-bites

[ii] Dogs of similar size and purpose to the modern beagle^[a] can be traced in Ancient Greece^[2] back to around the 5th century BC. Xenophon, born around 430 BC, in his Treatise on Hunting or Cynegeticus refers to a hound that hunted hares by scent and was followed on foot – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle#Hunting

[iii] http://www.animalplanet.com/breed-selector/dog-breeds/hound/beagle.html