“Yo mom and dad, Pawsburg is all sorts of cuckoo tonight! Ghostly man caught munching on Fur Tacos – not a pooch in sight! Labradoodle Lake’s whispers went all cat – clamming up after sunset. Pbear, being the diva she is, shrugged off all the spooks for a rendezvous with the Westie Woods. Tonight’s chit-chat at the park: Specter Snackman. What’s next, alien cats? Time will tail. Woofs and licks, Puggie xx”

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I plunged into the night, Pbear right at my side, her trusty stuffed squirrel and elephant bobbing from her collar. Something was amiss in Pawsburg.

“C’mon, Pbear, shake a leg!” I asked her, keeping a close eye on the lurking shadows, not that Pbear wasn’t perfectly capable of looking after herself…and me. You’d think dogs would lose dignity being cursed with such small legs, but not Pbear. The Chihuahua in her probably, granting her speed that would make any greyhound breathless in envy.

The twilight swallowed up Labradoodle Lake, its usual lapping whispers gone silent. The lake did behave rather cat-like, for a lake. Flirtatious in the day, but like any cat, it clammed up after sundown.

As we rattled on in the murky silence, the ol’ mine-train tracks to Westie Woods seemed darker than usual. “I reckon the moon has eloped again,” I muttered to myself, the floating-tooth grin of the invisible moon seeming a bit toothless tonight.

Suddenly, Pbear halted, her plush elephant swinging violently as she jerked her head, her round eyes locking onto Pooched Potatoes. “What’s the matter, Pbear?” I asked. Her alertness prickled the hair on the back of my neck. It reminded me of the time she perceived the delivery person as an unwelcome intruder.

Following her gaze, I too noticed it. A spectral figure, half-immersed in shadows, shoveling away food from Fur Tacos it seemed. But the real horror was, it wasn’t a dog. It was…human!

“I say,” I stammered. “That’s peculiar. Even for Pawsburg!” Barely had I muttered when the figure turned its ethereal gaze towards us. A shiver crawled past my spine and decisively sat on my wit, muffling it efficiently.

Pbear, braver than any knight, shrugged, opting to ignore the specter. She patted towards Woof and Whisker Wellness Center. She always knew what to do, that wise old dame. And right she was, what could a ghost potentially do to harm a snug coterie of furry doggos, right? Pbear seemed to believe in the mantra, “Ignore it, and it shall away”. Apart from the mailman. And the vet of course.

Suddenly, for Pbear, a gentle rustling emerged from her favorite hangout, Eastern White Westie Woods. Neurons fired, her ears acutely tuned – did her friends, Tiki, Anna or Wesley emerge from a romp in the woods?

Alas, it was but a raven, perched ominously on a branch. “Wrong Genre, bird o’ ill omen!” Pbear’s seemingly raised eyebrows communicated the canine equivalent of a roll of the eyes, dismissing the cliche creature of the night.

Doggedly determined, Pbear trotted towards Westie Woods, nicely contrasting the spectral figure still aimlessly shoveling air in the background; merely nuisance in the grand scheme of things. “When it rains, it pours,” I thought aloud.

It’s when Pbear turned to me, a sparkle in her profoundly human-like eyes, her pink blanket in tow that I remembered – Pbear isn’t one to cower in front of the ominous footprints of the supernatural; she chose her own destiny. And so, from one terror into the jaws of another, we rustled up our courage, heading into the woods, going our own way.

After all, what’s another day in Pawsburg? Another curiosity to chase, another adventure to pounce on, and another tale for the doggy park. Tonight, the spectral man shoveling tacos would be the talk of the flea town. But who knows what tomorrow might bring?

The End.