Hey there, dire fur-fanatic,

Just a Smudge update from Pawsburg! Things have been a whirl; stumbled upon life, love & lemons in my adventurous tour. Daisy, the Golden Ret, has secured a big fuzzy place in my heart. Yup, comedy, chaos, and canine couture all on the daily menu here. Bark soon!

Yours in fluff,
Testing a.k.a Smudge

Listen to the story here

So there I was, Smudge, traipsing through Pawsburg in my signature style: a disheveled cloud of brown and white fluff, one ear bouncing to its own rhythm, tail wagging with the fury of a thousand suns. Might I add, my slightly lopsided grin was an absolutely fetching look.

I started my day with the Yellow Tan Dalmatian Desert sand squishing in between my paws, and the sun making my fur shimmer. Top it with psychedelic yucca trees punctuating the horizon and there you have my daily view—no biggie.

Deciding I needed a pick-me-up of the edible variety, I trotted over to “Pup-Peroni” without a second thought. One whiff of the day’s special and my stomach was doing the cha-cha. Chicken stew, god bless their souls.

Contented, I was about to set off for home when I heard it—the jingle-jangle of the door to “The Fetching Feline Pet Emporium”—and out trotted Daisy, a medium-size Golden Retriever who was anything but medium in terms of personality.

Her lush fur was set off perfectly by her pink bow, a perfect contrast to my… unique…aesthetic. She was the yin to my scruffy yang, the prim and proper apple to my park-dirty eye. I wagged my tail and trotted over, ready to unleash all my charm; I tripped over a pebble, did a quick face-plant, and stood up with dirt on my face. Classic Smudge.

“Hi, Daisy,” I said, grinning lopsidedly. “You smell great.”

A pair of coy, questioning eyes followed by a gentle laugh, “Oh, you mean the new shampoo? Thanks, Smudge. It’s called Lemon Breeze or something.”

My face twisted into what I hoped was a smile, but probably more closely resembled an extremely confused bagel. It was my “Lemon Shoelace Incident” face, sheesh! Lemon? My arch-nemesis. The comedy of errors had begun.

But love, yes, love! You know how they say, ‘Love makes the world go round’? They’ve clearly never met a dog. For us, it’s more like, ‘Love makes us sniff each other a lot’, and boy, did Daisy and I sniff!

Throughout the following weeks, every adventure led to another funny and charming interaction: the Frisbee competition at Brindle Brown Boxer Beach (where Daisy buried my Frisbee—hah!), cozy dinners at Kibble Cuisine and Pup-Tizers, even shopping sprees at Canine Couture Clothing (Daisy once pushed me right into a frilly dress rack, honestly how mortifying yet hilarious).

The day-in-day-out shenanigans had snowballed into something beautiful. And while I couldn’t quite figure out lemons or rid myself of the dirt from the park, I did learn one thing: no smudge is too big to get in the way of love, especially when it comes with a whimsical wagging tail.

Ultimately, even though I didn’t get the stew, it turned out to be one heck of a sweet lemony ride, after all. So, there you have it. My day, Smudge style: a whirlwind tour through Pawsburg, swaggering between comedy and romance, found somewhere between lots of sniffing and a dash of canine couture.

The End.