… a beginners go-to guide.
I’m always getting questions about the beagle and ways in which it could possibly be useful. Usually, I’m completely lost as to how to provide any truthful answer to those asking, but it seems that I might actually have stumbled upon a potential application for said canine: sports betting.
I don’t do much sports betting, and when I do, it’s just for fun, rather than trying to make any huge profit from it. The thrill of predicting the win or the result or the scorer is what I’m after, not enough cash to feed the family for the rest of the month. Mostly, anyway. But I’ve never put any money on golf before. I have limited interest in watching lots of (predominantly) American men trying to stroke their balls as few times as possible. However, that was before I caught sight of Bryson Dechambreau (French name, American bloke) and his weird swing. Careful now.
I asked resident 6000 miles… golf expert, the Tall Accountant, about him and we had a short but informative exchange about who might or might not win the US Masters golf tournament. I came out of that conversation with 2 names in mind: Mr OfBedroomWater* and last year’s winner and competition favourite (and husband of Wayne Gretzky’s daughter) (just google it) Dustin “DJ” Johnson. Probably no point betting on either of those though, because one wasn’t going to win and the other was too big a favourite and when he did win (spoiler: he didn’t), you’d get R3.50 back for your efforts. So I chose two other non-American names at random (apart from them not being American, obviously): Canada’s Corey Conners and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama. But then again, there’s no point in betting on all of them to win because that can’t happen, and so I decided to allow the beagle to choose what I should do. However, simply asking the beagle which one of these competitors was worthy of my hard-earned cash seemed to fall – quite literally – upon deaf ears. It’s not like the beagle ever listens to me anyway, unless there’s food involved. And that was the thought that gave me my great idea: I’d get an answer using a system not dissimilar to the Paul the Octopus thing during the 2010 World Cup.
I assigned each of my would-be heroes to a equally sized piece of bacon-flavoured beagle biscuit and placed them carefully on the floor in the kitchen. Corey Conners got snaffled well before the official start due to my foolish trust of the beagle, and had to be replaced. But then, with the kitchen door closed and the beagle on one side of it and the biscuits on the other, I reacquainted myself one more time with each of the crunchy golfers and then released the hound.
And there was no question of who the beagle was going for – making a direct bee-(gle)-line straight to Mr Matsuyama before immediately gobbling down Messrs Conners, Johnson and BonjourCavaBienMerciEtToi.
And that’s why my money went on the Japanese guy who would eventually, some 3½ days later, win the 2021 US Masters Golf Competition and win me untold riches. Well done beagle, well done Mr Matsuyama, well done me.
So, should you be struggling over a decision involving this sort of thing, please just remember that in 2016, a crack commando dog was sent to prison by a veterinary court for a crime it didn’t commit. This dog promptly escaped from a maximum security kennel to the Cape Town Southern Suburbs underground.
Today, still wanted by the SPCA it survives as a soldier of fortune and snorfer of biscuits.
If you have a sports betting problem, if no one else can help – and if you can find it – maybe you can hire… My Beagle.
Beagle is only available when not napping.
Applicant must supply own biscuits.
Past performance in no indicator of future success.
Winners know when to stop.
Other terms and conditions may apply.
* a rough translation