Our beagle's tail trains down instead of up

Hi, everyone. So, our little guy, Todd, was rescued from a highway by my daughter. He was running around as an 8-week-old puppy with leash attached. We put out word on two or three lost dog sites and put out signs in our neighborhood and the nearby apartment and searched for the owner for a couple of weeks and there was no response. So he's been ours now for about a year and a half and we love him! He's so cute, parti-colored, with the bright white tip on his tail. And he is soooo stubborn--he does NOT listen like our previous dogs, a lab and retriever. And he is a handful. And he is LOUD! He defines the etymological connection between "beagle" and "bugle" (if that's a thing--is there some debate about that?). But he howls for joy when my wife and I arrive home, pursing his lips into a little circle. It's hard not to love a dog who is so happy to see you at the end of a day!

But I've never had a beagle before, and I did not realize until looking at pictures of beagles online that a beagle's tail trains upwards, so that they can hunt and the hunters can see their dogs running through the brush from their tails. Well, ours would not have made a good hunter on that count (though once he gets on a scent he will NEVER, EVER get off of it unless you drag him away from it). His tail has always swished in the opposite direction. When he's relaxed in the yard, the tail points straight out and turns down about 3/4 of the way to the end of his tail. When he's excited, it goes up in the air, but at about a 45-degree angle, never sticking straight up and curved toward his head like all of the beagle pictures online.

So we're wondering, because we do not know his pedigree, whether he has some other breed mixed in with him. He looks like a beagle in every other respect. But what about that tail? I've searched online for the answer to this but all of the sites simply talk about how a drooping tail is a sign the beagle is sick or distraught or something of that nature. But he's not either of those things. It's just the way his tail trains.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for your help!