Hey Mom 🎄✨,

Just had to share – I turned our town’s Grinch into a holiday cheer spectator, all with a little paw-held persuasion and a pair of plastic keys! Pawsburgh’s Christmas spirit is safe, and my tail’s wagging like a metronome on overdrive. Miss you more than peanut butter treats!

Licks and Wags,
Bel, your Christmas crusader 🐾❤️

Listen to the story here

In the sprawling splendor of Pawsburgh, I, Bella Mae, have my own slice of heaven. But today, the spirit of Yuletide was thick upon the air, even as the first light of dawn crept shyly over the rooftops of Pinscher Plaza.

I trotted briskly down Pearl Papillon Promenade—I had places to be, you understand. The Christmas market at Bloodhound Bluffs was not going to appreciate itself. And who better to lead the charge than a French Bulldog of impeccable taste and boundless energy?

My friend Dempsey, with his tousled rust-colored coat, was to meet me at Mutt Munchies. He’s usually punctual, that Dempsey, but today of all days, the boy was nowhere to be sniffed out. In a town that never stops wagging, Dempsey had chosen to be a stationary tail.

A brief pause at Mutt Munchies to sink my teeth into a particularly succulent slice of watermelon—flavor so divine, the angels must weep culinary tears—then I set off towards the The Doggy Depot to sniff out a gift for Mom.

The plaza was bedecked as though King Spaniel himself were visiting. Garlands hung like curtains from every stall; ornaments glistened, reflecting a thousand-fold the cheer of the season.

Yet not all hearts sang a song of Christmas joy. As cheer danced through Pawsburgh, there was one shadow in its midst. On the outskirts of town, beyond Bloodhound Bluffs, lived the Grinch—no other name for him. A hermit by choice, the man, hooman they call them, lived in sour disdain of all festivities, barking at any who dared to spread cheer near his door.

Dempsey appeared, out of breath, “Bella Mae! Urgent news!” he barked, “The Grinch, he—”

“Has he ruined Christmas?” I inquired. Grinches, I had read, have a knack for such things.

“No, worse! He’s indifferent,” Dempsey replied, his tail drooping.

To be indifferent at Christmas? Unthinkable.

Betwixt mouthfuls of watermelon, an idea as bold as it was reckless took root. “I shall visit the Grinch,” I declared.

Dempsey’s snout wrinkled in concern. “Beware, Bella Mae. Joy has no place there.”

But off I scampered to the very edge of the town, where fun went to die and Christmas curled up beside it.

Knocking was beneath me. So I barged in, a riot of black, white, and brown, straight into the heart of the anti-Christmas—the Grinch’s lair.

“Who are you?” he scowled, a voice like gravel.

“Bella Mae, sir,” tail a-wag amidst the gloom. “I’m here to discuss Christmas with you.”

His grumble rattled the windowpanes. “Christmas is a disturbance.”

“Oh, but sir!” I leapt into a soliloquy about the wonders of Pawsburgh’s Christmas, about friends and feasts at Dachshund’s Deli, about the sparkle in Mom’s eyes as she watched the joy I spread, about the tranquility at the lake that was only magnified by the season’s delight.

“Christmas,” I professed, “is more than a disturbance. It’s an embrace.”

I could see the cracks in his grizzly facade, the shifts in his shadows. A gift was in order.

A quick dash to The Pooch Playhouse rewarded me with the perfect token—a set of plastic keys, my own beloved toy, which I now placed by the Grinch’s foot.

He looked perplexed, touched them with a curious finger. Curiosity—a start!

Christmas Day dawned, and there stood the Grinch at Bloodhound Bluffs, not scowling, not grumbling, but watching. A spectacle it was—the great Grinch of Pawsburgh, defeated not by arguments, but by a dog’s boundless affection.

In the language of Jerome K., it is said that to love a dog is to know the purest of joys. And so, it seems, even the coldest heart in Pawsburgh was warmed by a wagging tail and the spirit of canine companionship, as pure as the Christmases we cherish.

The End.