This ‘kooky’ beagle pees while doing a handstand
Some dogs can give high-fives or play dead but this Brooklyn beagle can pee while doing a handstand.
Augie, an 8-year-old beagle raised in Williamsburg, doesn’t relieve himself like normal dogs. Instead, he gets up on his two front legs and lets nature take its course, baffling his owner, Justin McCarthy.
“It’s the wackiest thing… people go crazy when they see him… they usually run over and say ‘Hey wait a minute, did you train that dog to do that?’ which I find hysterical. That’d be a weird thing to train a dog to do,” McCarthy said.
“He just does it, we’re not sure why. He’s just a kooky dog.”
Videos of Augie posted to YouTube show him peeing like any normal male dog would, with one leg raised in the air and the other three firmly planted on the grass. But then, Augie’s other rear leg slowly rises in the air, mid-stream, bringing him to a full handstand position. He then walks on his two front legs like a human wheelbarrow until his potty break is completed.
McCarthy, who now lives in Southampton on Long Island, said Augie can walk in various directions and zig-zag through obstacles, whizzing all the way.
“He will navigate through objects to not sit down, which is pretty funny,” McCarthy laughed.
He said Augie has been doing this since he was a puppy: “He learned how to put one leg up and he’d just tip over, so in the early stages he’d just start to tip over and do sort of a cartwheel. I think he got frustrated with that so instead of falling down, he’d just stay up and now he does it pretty much all the time.”
Veterinarians who’ve seen the video or worked with Augie have no idea why he does it, he said.
“A vet tech stopped me one time and said ‘Oh, he probably has some terrier in him because terriers try to be big when they use the bathroom,” McCarthy said.
Another thought Augie just might be a neat freak.
“Another vet tech told me that he might be just a really clean dog and he’s trying to keep everything away from him but if you know this dog he isn’t a really clean dog,” McCarthy joked.
When Augie’s usual veterinarian first saw the trick, she thought McCarthy actually modified the video to trick her.
“She said ‘Wait a minute, let me look at that, that’s not real. I’ve been a vet for 30 years and worked with thousands of dogs but I’ve never seen anything like that,’” McCarthy recounted.
One of McCarthy’s friends, who works as a fitness trainer, commented on how strong Augie’s core must be.
“He drops all the way to the ground like he’s gonna put his feet down but he doesn’t… my friend said that takes a tremendous amount of core strength,” McCarthy laughed.
Augie contacted the Post after seeing a video of a pug in Canada who could perform a similar trick.
“I saw [another dog] and I was like, ‘Hold up, wait a minute. That guy’s good but that’s a straight line. I can’t let that go. Augie can do much more than that.'”