Beagles have a reputation — nose-driven, mischievous, vocal, stubborn in the most endearing way. Hunter, the beagle I grew up with, was all of that and then some: he escaped the yard so reliably we had to rebuild the fence, howled the second we said the word “walk,” and panted through every car ride like it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. The second the house was empty, he’d turn full food detective — more than once we came home to a torn-open bag of rice. Total confidence, soaked in love and completely incapable of doubt.
Arlo is mostly none of that. He’s unusually quiet in the car — quiet enough that I sometimes double-check he’s actually back there. He doesn’t get into anything when I leave, though sometimes he’ll howl instead. He startles at sounds most dogs wouldn’t notice. He’s more cautious than curious on walks, and it takes him a while to trust anyone new. If you’re just meeting him: he’s a beagle I rescued from Envigo in 2022, and his Embark DNA results later led me to his biological family — his mom, his dad, and 52 half-siblings.
Same breed. Very different dog. And I wondered — what in Arlo is genetics, what is his history, and what is just him. As a dog who carries trauma, understanding that felt like part of continuing to support his healing. That’s the question Embark’s new Behavior Insights feature — paired with an add-on personalized training plan — is built to answer. Not just where he started, but what I can do about it. (Keep reading — his anxiety scores nailed it).
What Behavior Insights Is — and How It Works
Behavior Insights asks you to rate what your dog actually does across five categories:
- Out in the World — how he responds to new environments, loud noises, unfamiliar situations
- At Home Alone — separation anxiety and confinement behavior
- Around Other Dogs — reactivity and social confidence with unfamiliar dogs
- Around Other People — how he handles strangers and new visitors
- When Feelings Get Big — how he processes emotional intensity broadly
Together, they paint a picture of how he reacts to and takes in the world around him. The whole thing took me a few minutes. Once you’re done, Embark lines your answers up against fifteen genetic behavior scores across those same categories and shows you both at once — a slider from lowest to highest, with a dotted line marking the average for Embark-tested dogs, showing where Arlo lands genetically. Tap “Observed” and it places your real-life answer right next to his DNA result, side by side. Tap “What It Means” and it explains the science behind the behavior and what you can actually do about it.
It’s the same nature-vs-nurture question at the center of this whole piece — Embark is upfront that genetics is only part of the story, and the rest comes from everything that happens after birth. For a dog with Arlo’s background, that’s doing a lot of the work.
One Behavior Insights score is available free once your breed results are in. Unlocking all fifteen scores — along with a full year of guided training — is an add-on to the Breed ID or Breed + Health Dog DNA Test.
Where the Science Met the Dog I Know
Some of Arlo’s scores matched what I’ve actually watched him do so closely that it felt like a missing piece finally clicking into place.
Loud noises
Genetically, Arlo is 1.6x more likely than the average Embark-tested dog to be anxious around loud noises. When the app asked me to rate his anxiety around loud noises based on my own observations, I said he’s always anxious around them. A car door, wind against the window, a stranger’s footsteps two houses down. It doesn’t have to be dramatic to set him off. The app’s response: the anxiety has genetic roots, but with gentle exposure and patience, he can grow more confident. You’re doing great by being attentive. (I needed to hear that!)
Separation anxiety
1.3x more likely to experience separation anxiety than average. My answer: often. He sometimes howls when I leave. He doesn’t destroy anything, which is different from Hunter, who found food the second we walked out. He does lick his paws sometimes — something I’ve come to recognize as his quiet way of self-soothing. Two dogs, similar genetic odds on the anxiety side, have completely different ways of showing it.
Confinement anxiety
1.7x more likely than average to be anxious when confined at home. Reading that made me especially grateful he’s out of the crate at the breeding facility and free to roam my home now — and that he never needed much crate training to begin with. What has helped, on a trainer’s advice, is structured confinement instead: using a door to section off space when he needs somewhere quieter to settle and let the anxiety pass.
Reactivity around other dogs
1.2x more likely to react when unfamiliar dogs enter his space, and 1.8x more likely to be anxious around them in the first place. This tracks, especially after one scary run-in with a dog outside our home. He’ll charge and bark at the door when a dog approaches the house, and the more abruptly it happens, the bigger the reaction. With ones he knows, he’s warm and excited. With new ones, he takes his time, sniffs slowly, and sometimes just keeps his distance. Not aggressive, but cautious and guarded — which makes complete sense given where he came from.
Reactivity towards people
36% less likely to be reactive toward strangers on leash. Arlo earns trust slowly and isn’t usually interested in people he doesn’t know (unless there’s food). Any fear-based behavior tends to show up when he feels threatened. His genetics don’t lean strongly either way, and it was genuinely good to know that his calm around strangers on leash is at least partly a reflection of the work we’ve put in together.
What the Insights Gave Me
Arlo is sensitive. A neighbor’s dog barking through the fence can set him off for the rest of the walk. He’ll sometimes stop mid-sidewalk and plant himself — his version of I’m done, we’re going home (and you’d be surprised at how strong his full 24-pound little body and bunny legs are when they stubbornly stand the ground).
Some of that I understand now more than I used to. A while back, a large dog came fully charging at him right outside our home. I scooped him up mid-stride, spotted a parked truck with an open trunk and threw him in — scratching my arms in the process, heart jumping out of my chest. I was rattled for the next 48 hours. Arlo, I think, has been carrying it longer than that. He’s wary of leaving the house now in a way he wasn’t before.
Understanding his genetic baseline for anxiety — and seeing how much of it is confirmed by his actual behavior — gave me a clearer picture of what he’s actually carrying. Not a diagnosis, not a fix. Just a better way to understand him, so I can continue showing up for him more intentionally. At home. Outside. On the sidewalk, eventually, the way he already is on a trail.
The Quirks Worth Keeping
Hunter had his own version of this — the howling, the food raids, the great escapes. Just a dog being himself. Every dog has their thing, and not everything is worth examining too closely.
What Behavior Insights helped me do is separate the two: the quirks that are just Arlo being Arlo — silly, stubborn, unapologetically himself — from the ones rooted in anxiety or fear that are actually worth working on. Because when I’m watching him rub his whole body against anything that smells like leather — shoes, bags, my belt — or catch him carrying a toy all the way to bed to sleep with it, or feel him staring me down from the couch — all of it is just him. And I want more of it.
The goal was never to change who he is. It’s to give him enough ease that the silly, stubborn, fully-himself version of Arlo gets to come out even more.
What We’re Working On
Behavior Insights doesn’t stop at the score. There’s a “Learn More” section on managing big reactions — why your dog reacts, and how to help them feel safer — broken into simple, practical tips. A big reaction means he’s scared, anxious, or stressed, and the goal isn’t to stop the reaction immediately but to slowly change how he feels about the trigger. The reframe that stuck most: you’re not training him to behave differently, you’re rewiring how he feels. Every calm moment near a trigger is a small win.
That approach feeds directly into the personalized training plan that comes with the same add-on, run through Dogo, Embark‘s training partner app — short sessions at home, at your own pace, built around positive reinforcement.
In practice, that looks like setting up a trigger on purpose — dropping something, playing a noise on my phone — and rewarding the moment he turns toward it so the trigger starts meaning something good happens instead of something to brace for. Other sessions are simpler: hiding treats around the house, or having him track one in my hand, which does the same work in a different form — building confidence and burning off nervous energy. Even attention counts on its own: looking at Arlo is reinforcing, and withholding it when he does something I don’t love works as a boundary, not a punishment. You don’t have to rely on treats to work with your dog — especially one as food motivated as Arlo. What a revelation!
We’re on a fourteen-day training streak right now, and it’s become something we both look forward to — less training, more play time together. My goals map straight onto his scores: fewer triggered reactions to the sounds that set him off, a little more confidence around new people, and less guarded out on the sidewalk the way he already is on a trail.
For the Weirdos We Love
Hunter followed every smell, escaped everything, and panted through every road trip we ever took. Arlo carries his toys to bed, acts silly when he poops, and just likes to stare back at me from the couch. And somehow, they both had the exact same greeting: grab a shoe the second I walked in, trot it around like it’s a gift, whole body wagging. Neither was ever taught it.
Beagles are wired to be docile and trusting — gentle by breed. It’s part of what makes them so easy to love. Arlo spent his first year in confinement, and some of what lives in him now is the inheritance of that — the anxiety, the sensitivity, the careful way he earns trust. Behavior Insights helped me see which parts of that are his genetics and which parts are his story. And that clarity gave me somewhere to start.
Hunter never needed any of that. He was just free, from the very beginning.
Arlo is getting there.
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New to Arlo’s Embark story? Start from the beginning:
From Rescue to Reunion: How Embark Helped Me Discover Arlo’s Story
Finding Arlo: How a Rescue Beagle Found His Way Back to His Family
