She was walking her hound. It was a young beagle. Loose skin. Smooshy face. Uncoordinated feet the size of Lodge skillets.

I was in Forsyth Park, in the heart of Savannah. It was overcast and gray. There were various soccer teams on the field, doing drills. And I was mesmerized by the animal.

Hound puppies walk differently than normal puppies, on account of all the floppy skin. A baby bloodhound, for example, walks like a toddler wearing his mom’s bathrobe. Gleeful, but graceless.

I have a thing for hounds. Always have. In my life, I have been owned by four hounds. Two have been bloodhounds. One was a beagle.

My first childhood hound was Moses. Moses was full-blooded beagle, and I happened to be fully human. So we formed a natural friendship.

I’ll never forget meeting him for the first time. A neighbor’s dog had puppies. There was a sign by the road. “Free Puppies.”

There is no phrase in the English language better than “free puppies.” Not to a kid. I begged my mother to stop the car. I pleaded. I supplicated. I implored her.

“We are NOT getting a puppy,” said my mother, pulling over.

The puppies were in a barn. I found Moses in the corner, chewing on a brick.

He was so tiny, about the size of an anemic hamster. And he wasn’t making any progress with the brick. Still, he was cocksure and confident that things would work out in his favor if only he could, somehow, manage to fit the entire brick in his mouth.

Moses’s mother, God love her, was lying on her side. She looked exhausted. When she saw me inspecting him, she moved her tired eyes to meet mine.

It was as though her drooping eyes were saying, “Please, take him.”

“Can I keep him?” I asked my mother.

I begged. I entreated. I beseeched. I invoked Scripture. I offered to be my mother’s indentured servant until I was in my mid to late 40s.

From that day onward, Moses was always with me. He rode in the handlebar basket of my bicycle. And when Moses grew big enough, he rode a bicycle of his own. Well, sort of. He sat in a wagon behind my bike.

It was the sound of Moses’s baying I loved best.

A hound does not merely bark. It bays. Theirs is not a repetitive shriek. It is a song. With a rounder pitch. Sustained straight tones, devoid of vibrato, landing somewhere around F above middle C. Slightly hoarse. Like they have just smoked a pack of menthols.

Moses was your classic scent hound, he was fiercely independent. He did his own thing, and made no apologies for it.

A hound is nothing like a Labrador. A retriever will work tirelessly to win your approval. Their affection is their bargaining chip.

But a hound doesn’t give a flying flannel what you want. There are too many smells to enjoy. Too many dead squirrel carcasses to roll in. Too many varieties of feline excrement to sample.

But on the sporadic occasion a hound decides it WANTS your affection, it will seek you out. It will move Heaven and Hades to find you. It will track you.

Your hound will find you, maybe playing in your treehouse, or cleaning your bedroom, or standing at first base. You will see it bounding across an open field, long ears splaying in the wind, like wings.

He will leap against you with a body slam. You will fall into the dust and this animal will bless you. It will bless you immensely.

Moses is buried near the creek. I dug the hole myself. I was 12 and I kept dropping the shovel to blow my nose.

A lone brick marks his grave. After all these years, I don’t know if the brick is still there.

But my heart is.