I have the same problem with my doberman and especially the pspillon. I want to use my free horse manure and the pap puppy keeps dragging it in the house. I can imagine beagles are awful with their great noses! We hunt jackrabbits on horseback with a beagle pack (like traditional foxhunting) here in Phoenix. Awesome little dogs. We also have a hound pack in Flagstaff and visit a harrier pack in CA. Anyway, I've only found fencing, especially a low electric fence to be effective. My doberman I was able to use a shock collar on a low setting. I only did it once but she's very, very sensitive. I haven't done it with the papillon, mainly because the collar is too heavy but also because she's much harder head than the Doberman so that I think she would simply learn not to pick up horse poop when the collate is on. The Doberman learned "mommy doesn't like me to pick up horse poop and made my neck buzz" which would be the more desirable response. My experience with hunting dogs is they have tunnel vision so if the collar is not on it's not going to work. The Doberman and some other working breeds are much different than hunting/hound breeds. Less tunnel vision and prey focus, more please my mommy focus. I haven't had my papillon puppy long enough to figure her out, she seems more along the lines of a border collie or spaniel, highly OCD and focused, off the charts smart but pretty independent as well. Anyway, with beagles, your best option would be a 4-6 inch high electric fence which you can make using 1/2 inch PVC pipe for your pole, drill holes to run wire through, no worries about needing insulator for this. Add two long pieces of rebar pounded into the grounded 3-4 feet deep, 3-4 feet apart. These are your grounds. For your charges, if you have acess to electricity you can use a cheap 110 charger. If not, I would highly recommend a solar charger which works fantastically. Make sure your grounds are kept damp as dry ground won't do as well. I water the ground poles every week if it doesn't rain. This type of system is very effective and not ugly system

Ooh, I hadn't considered an armandii.. that would be lovely, though I suspect it might try to take over. I may just scout around and see if I can find any alpina/macropetala that have vaguely dark leaves.. Arg, decisions! Thanks anyway :)

Do you have room for a Chinese pistache tree? We loved ours that we planted at our last house, and watched it grow for about ten years. It was a tough son of a gun, and had a beautiful shape (I pruned some limbs to give it sort of that open vase shape). Often planted as a street tree (medians, etc) because it is the Energizer bunny of trees - just keeps going and going. It is in Steve Dobbs' book of Oklahoma Gardening as a recommended tree. Here is a link that might be useful: Info on Chinese Pistache

I'm new to gardening so this might be a silly suggestion (and I don't know if it would work with your "poisoning" situation) - plus I don't know if these plants would be available in the U.S. - BUT - FWIW - I thought I'd mention plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' as it doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet. I've got several growing in full shade (from buildings, so no sun at all) - and they're wonderful. They get covered in beautiful lavender flowers and they grow VERY fast, into a fairly big rounded bush (1m x 1m - although I've seen pictures of them growing 2 - 3 times that) - in fact, I've had to prune mine back a couple of times already. Here's a picture of some at my local garden centre. These are small - they grow into a big bush really fast: I got them because I want constant flowers/colour in my garden - LOL - and I wanted something that would bloom in full shade(and I loved the look of their blooms) - and I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy they are to take care of. And one good thing is - unlike a lot of full shade plants - they don't seem to mind if they do get hit by sunshine. I had to move a couple of my bushes since they grew so fast, they outgrew the space in the shade and the only spots I had left were in partial sun (with full direct sun for part of the day - and we have VERY hot, intense sunlight) - and they seemed to cope fine too. No burning. They also seem to take hard pruning very well, as I need to keep them small for my tiny suburban garden. I am in Western Australia, with very dry, sandy soil which has low nutrients and doesn't hold water. ~ HY ps. oh, and I thought I'd mention that I also have (DA) Charles Rennie Mackintosh growing in shade for most of the day and he seems to be growing & blooming really well. He's in an area sandwiched between the garage & the house, so shaded on both sides by buildings, with just a tiny gap of sky above. The sun does come in through the gap and moves across the area, so each plant gets about 2hrs max of sunlight - but the rest of the time, it's shade. Bright shade, though. But I know CRM remains pretty small so it's probably not what you want! :-)