Breed: Beagle
Date of birth: 31/12/2018
Gender: Male
Neck circumference: 39cm
Chest circumference: ~20cm
Base of neck to base of tail: 50cm
Height to shoulder: 45cm
Weight: 17kg
 

*Kennel Club name: Jalhar The Wonder of You at Haggatty

General Description

Registered under a show name borrowed from an Elvis Presley ballad, he has spent his career living up to it. This is a classically marked tricolour beagle with an open, cheerful face and the kind of easy temperament that makes a long shoot day painless for everybody involved. He is active and playful, endlessly willing to please, and yet perfectly content to be scooped up and cuddled, apparently under the impression that he is a far smaller dog than he actually is. He will do very nearly anything for food.

The beagle is one of England’s oldest scent hound types, with the modern breed largely credited to the Reverend Phillip Honeywood, who established his pack in Essex during the 1830s and laid the foundations for the dog we recognise today. The name itself probably derives either from the Old French bégueule, meaning open throat, or from the Gaelic beag for small. That famous nose has carried the breed a long way, from the hare fields of rural England into detection work at airports and borders worldwide, while Charles Schulz turned Snoopy into arguably the most recognisable dog in publishing history. Darwin’s survey ship lent the name a scientific afterlife too.

Elvis arrives with a serious CV. He fronted the 2022 Beagle Street television campaign and its website rebrand, appeared in the Tails.com Christmas advertising in 2024 and was photographed by Rankin for the Animal Free Research UK celebrity campaign in 2025, a project with particular resonance given how often his breed has been used in laboratories. He also won his class at Crufts in 2025. He lives among six other beagles and five cats, has met horses and livestock and is entirely unfazed by any of it.

Very few dogs on our books have his combination of physical range and set experience. Elvis balances on objects and on moving surfaces, walks a balance beam, sails through a hoop, jumps into and onto things, springs in and out of a car boot, enters and exits confined spaces and runs full tilt into a waiting pair of arms. That makes him a strong fit for physical comedy, family adventure, stunt-adjacent sequences and anything where a small hound needs to get somewhere it arguably should not be.

His control work is just as useful. He walks backwards on cue, stands, holds a stay, sits on a platform, touches an object with his nose, opens a box and gives a kiss on command. He works confidently with props and has motion capture experience, which puts him in the frame for animation, gaming and VFX-led productions. Because he is calm under pressure, unbothered by loud noise and patient across long days, he handles complicated multi-set-up shoots without losing his edge.

Tricolour markings are a photographer’s shortcut to a strong image, the black saddle and tan face reading crisply against bold colour, pale studio backdrops and festive styling alike. Elvis is thoroughly studio-literate: he holds a pose, looks where he is directed, redirects his gaze to a mark, a person or a point and works comfortably under professional lighting and flash. Product placement is well within his range and he has already delivered national campaigns in pet food, insurance and charity advertising.

Wardrobe is no obstacle either. He wears costumes, accessories, a muzzle and a GoPro happily, and he is comfortable being suspended in a harness, which opens up creative rigging and aerial concepts most dogs cannot service. He interacts with a touchscreen, useful for technology, app and smart-home briefs, and plays tug and flirt pole for anything needing energy in the frame. Add his ease at meet-and-greets and his relaxed attitude to grooming and hairdryer work, and he suits launch events, in-store appearances and grooming or coat-care campaigns just as readily as studio work.