Sasha had an essential sweetness, and we ascribed her accidents to obliviousness, not malice. But she was wilier than we imagined. We bought a new house halfway through Sasha’s life. On moving day from the old place, when the furniture was taken out of the den, we saw that the wood flooring behind the couch had warped and buckled, saturated by Sasha.

We got Sasha from a group devoted to beagle rescue. Despite being bred as rabbit hunters, many beagles are apparently lousy at finding bunnies, because this mid-Atlantic rescue group had an endless stream of beagles from Virginia and West Virginia who been found wanting and then dumped. Even after we got Sasha, I would look on the website at desperate, maltreated beagles picked up while wandering, and I came to foster five beagles while they awaited new owners. (Why I didn’t channel this masochism toward writing “Fifty Shades of Grey” rather than a book on naughty dogs is a question I have asked myself.)

Some of our beagle guests made us appreciate Sasha. It was not a happy day when one of the dogs ate the TV remote just before my husband was about to watch “The Wire.” But beagles, like every other creature, have a range of personalities.

We took in only one puppy, Spice, who had been rescued from euthanasia by a caring lab technician after having been a test animal in a vaccine experiment. Because Spice had spent most of her life in a cage, she needed lessons in walking. Her first few days with us, she would place her hind legs on my husband’s feet and he would hold her front paws and they would march along, like a little girl on the dance floor with her father.

Then there was Annie, voluptuous with striking, darkly outlined eyes, who reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor. She had a phlegmatic personality — when I walked to my daughter’s elementary school she would let the kids “play” with her with little response. Something in my write-up about her spoke to a family with two young sons, the younger of whom had mild autism. When they met Annie at our house, they flipped for her. Over the years they sent me pictures of all of them together — Annie had her own life jacket when they went boating. She was a great source of companionship, and became a confidant of the younger boy. A couple of years ago the mother wrote to tell me Annie had died. She said Annie had been cremated and that when the mother’s time came, their ashes would be mixed together.

Sasha herself has been gone for four years. We now have a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. There is no need to worry about her running away; cavaliers are canine Velcro. But I have to stop these beagle reminiscences, before I find myself being drawn to the rescue beagle website, and volunteering to take in more strays. After all, the carpets have been cleaned and they’re back on the floor.