Hey Jamie,

Just wrapped up another day as Pawsburgh’s swiftest storyteller with fur as red as the desert sunset. Dodged chicken duty, traded bark for biscuit at Ellie’s, flirted with Sasha, and now gearing up to become a legend racing Max to the Dunes. Hold onto your collar – I’ll bring back wild dunes tales to howl over tonight. Tail wags and doggy brags, my friend.

Catch you at moonrise,
Ramses 🐾😎

Listen to the story here

The sun strikes first light, barely peeking over the horizons of Doberman Dunes, and I’m already stretching out my lithe Red-with-white-socks limbs. Name’s Ramses, partner. Perhaps you’ve heard of me; smooth Saluki with ears like the finest silk at the Sultan’s market, strutting down the dusty trails of Pawsburgh with a gaze deep as desert wells.

I sidle aside, paw step by paw step, toward the euphoria that is Mastiff’s Meals. The scents permeate my senses, awakening an ancient hunger, and I think, “Is today the day I indulge in Setter’s Steakhouse royalty?” but then, I shake my head. The chickens at home, waiting to be snuck under the table, would never forgive me.

Bark-n-Bite Bistro it is. I reckon I could grab a biscuit or two before the day truly rolls out. “Morning, Ellie,” I nod to the old Beagle mopping up the porch with her tail wagging. An honest day’s work before the world’s awake—that’s Ellie for ya.

Got my eyes set on the endless blue yonder of Newfoundland Nook, maybe take a dip before the heat strikes my coat like a blacksmith’s hammer. But the sands of Doberman Dunes pull at my heartstrings, playing a melody that only hounds with the desert in their soul could dance to.

Then, in the heart of the town, I pass The Dapper Dog Salon, where a spruced-up Pomeranian is telling a tale to a terrier with one ear perennially cocked. “And there I was,” he boasts, “in the rough and tumble of Pointer Pier, a falling crate of fish nearly turned me into a kebab!” A laugh tickles my throat at his overcooked story.

“Ramses,” calls Sasha, the gentle giant, her voice thundering over the wagging tongues of the morning crowd. I tip my imaginary Stetson her way, “Sasha, as charming as the spring’s first bloom.”

“You flatterer,” she rumbles in return. “Heading to the Dunes today?”

“Thought I might,” I confess, the promise of the chase pricking my paws with anticipation.

My attention is snagged by Max, a blur in a dog’s shape, weaving stories of his own mid-dash. He’s a legend, that one. If tales of speed could be bottled, he’d be the richest mongrel in Pawsburgh.

Despite my genteel nature and the posture of kings long past, the call of the wild, of my ancestors who hunted the sands, sets my spirit ablaze. There’s an art, you see, to running with your ghosts as they chase you into the future.

Pushing through the swinging doors of the Bistro, I enter to the delighted gaze of fellow patrons. “Ramses!” they bark in unison. Even here, in the Western canyons of the dog world, a Saluki holds court.

We trade tales over servings of gravy-covered bones. The untamed frontier is a fickle mistress, but here, among the bark and bite, we revel in the civilization we’ve spun from the desert’s heart.

Leaving Mastiff’s Meals to the whispering winds, I can’t help but perfect my sun-salted stroll, thinking of tonight’s tales I’ll spin for Jamie. “Oh, they tossed me in the Old Western jail, see, but I broke free using a hidden biscuit—”

My musings are cut short. “Ramses!” Max hollers, “Race you to the dunes?”

I grin, a shoot-out at sunset couldn’t set my heart galloping faster. A challenge hung in the air, a test of my heritage. “You’re on, partner,” I bark back. Oh, I can feel the sand already, the laughing leaves, my ancestors nodding their approval as we dart across the landscape.

Tales would be told of today, embroidered with Western twang and the shake of the great dunes. For in Pawsburgh, every dog’s story weaves into legend, under the vast, unyielding sky.

The End.