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The litter of six beagle puppies, born four weeks ago, is owned by Lori Abbott of Farmingdale. She has 10 beagles of her own and this is the first litter she's raising to sell to others.

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Donna Clark of South Thomaston and her beagle Becca compete at a dog show last fall in Massachusetts.

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Uno, a 15-inch beagle, poses with the trophy after winning Best in Show Tuesday at the 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Want to learn more about beagles? Here are some places to go:

The American Kennel Club's page on beagles.

A site with a video clip of a beagle baying.

The Waterville Beagle Club is an active organization.

The Salmon Falls River Beagle Club draws members from southern Maine and New Hampshire.

Dieter Bradbury is the online reporter for pressherald.com. Bradbury’s beat is designed to engage directly with readers and glean story ideas from your suggestions, Web postings and feedback. If you have comments, please post them here or send Bradbury an e-mail at dbradbury@pressherald.com

When a beagle won top prize at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this week, Donna Cook couldn’t contain herself.

“I was very excited about that,” said Cook, who breeds beagles and other dogs at Weskeag Labradors in South Thomaston. “I scared my 12-year-old labrador, jumping out of my chair.”

Such was the thrill that ran through the veins of Maine beagle owners when a dog named Uno was declared best in show at the prestigious competition on Tuesday.

The unpretentious breed, best known as the inspiration for cartoon characters like Snoopy and Underdog, had never won at Westminster. But this year a beagle from South Carolina defeated six other breeds in the final round, including a toy poodle, an Akita, a Sealyham terrier and an Australian shepherd.

Lori Abbott, who recently bred a litter of beagles in Farmingdale, was floored when Uno triumphed.

“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness that is amazing!’ – with all those other dogs,” she said.

The victory is sure to elevate the beagle’s popularity, and kennel owners are bracing for an onslaught of requests from families who want to take a puppy home.“The last time an English bulldog won that show, they were the number one selling breed in America,” said Patty Dubois, who raises beagles and other breeds at Superior Kennels in Arundel.

Dubois said she fielded a call the day after the Westminster show from a Portland company that wants to use beagles in its next product catalogue.

Beagles have long been among the five most popular breeds listed by the American Kennel Club, and they generally are considered good family pets because of their tolerance for children. They are also a prized hunting dog, primarily for rabbits, and will follow their noses until they drop.

Abbott and her husband got their first beagle to hunt with four years ago.

“I kinda turned him into a baby,” she said. “So I bought a second one.”

The family now has 10 beagles and is raising their first litter for sale.

Cook, in South Thomaston, said beagles are highly trainable but need stimulation and exercise or they will bark out of boredom. She screens buyers to make sure they have a fenced exercise area and an understanding that the beagle needs attention from its owners.

Attention is no problem for Tony Cummings, a guide from Sidney who keeps 10 beagles for hunting and field trials. The beagle is a “poor man’s dog,” he said, because they are relatively inexpensive and common.“They were bred to run rabbits, that’s what they were bred for,” he said.

Cummings feels lucky if he can sell a top beagle pup for $375 – a fraction of the cost of many other breeds.He said he didn’t watch the Westminster show and has little interest in show beagles because they are bred primarily for appearance and deportment rather than instinct, intelligence and hunting ability.

“They breed the hunting instinct right out of them, in a sense,” he said.

Still, Cummings sees a benefit for beagle owners in Uno’s triumph.

“That’s going to bring the price of them up,” he said. “I told my cousin, if you’ve got one you want to breed, now is the time to do it.”