Hey Dad,

Bad news: I got nabbed for a kibble heist I didn’t commit and they’ve stuck me in the clink. Good news: Broke out with Fat Russell’s help, not ready to be the shelter’s poster pooch. On the lam now and looking to clear my name. Tell the Spencerville crew I’m innocent and I’ll be home for belly rubs soon. Keep my bed warm and the chew toys ready.

Your fugitive furball,
Bubs

The moment Fat Russell tipped me off, my heart began to thump like a bass drum in a marching band, a not-so-silent herald of trouble brewing. They’d pinned it on me, the high-end kibble heist from Paws On The Grill, a place I’d only ever admired for its scent from afar. I wagged my tail in confusion and paced around, the glare of the barred shelter reflecting in my big brown eyes. Innocent? Sure as my snout is squashed, but here I was, trapped in what they called “temporary accommodation” while the Spencerville Sentries sniffed out the truth.

It was a caper, alright, and one I had no part in. They said a bulldog did it, and who else to point paws at but Bentley, the one with the face only a dad could love and an affinity for mischief?

But time was a luxury I couldn’t afford. They didn’t know the first thing about the real culprit. And the thought of a life behind bars, without my warm bed and goodnight snuggles from dad, was enough to make my jowls quiver. To break out, that was the forbidden biscuit. It wasn’t just about clearing my name; it was about snatching freedom back, grasping that hope of one day reuniting with dad.

Honestly, I was no Houdini hound. Fat Russell, though, he had contacts – feline ones, the street-savvy whispers called them, with nimble paws and silent meows. He had chirped about some secret escape routes from his countless cat chums. He knew Spencerville like the back of his paw; he could guide a blind mole to Siberian Summit under a shroud of night.

The shelter was quieter at night, a cemetery of lost causes and lonely howls. I waited for the moon to hit its zenith, the very air static with the charge of impending liberty. Fat Russell would come, I told myself, as sweat mingled with my fur and fear had me chasing my tail in my concrete cell.

The lock clicked, a sweet symphony of deliverance, as the shadow of a rather rotund figure appeared – Fat Russell, undoubtedly, squeezing through a gap only a cat or an incredibly determined bulldog could consider. “Bentley,” he hissed, a librarian in the council of echoes, “it’s now or never.”

South Poodle Pond was a beacon in the distance. The stars reflected in its still water, mirroring the freedom so close, yet speckled with treacherous pitfalls. Alongside Fat Russell, protected by degrees of kinship and unspoken pack laws, we skirted The Doggy Depot and leaped through the back alleys of Canine Couture Clothing, a blur of fur and fleeting shadows.

Bentley the bulldog, the alleged culprit, morphing into Bentley the bold, the fugitive with flapping jowls. A Houndini in the moonlight, galloping past the sleeping city of memories and past lives, I embraced each step like a puppy’s first stumble into the unknown. The air smelled of rebirth, tinged with the must of uncertainty, and the clutches of the night cloaked our caper in a symphony of adrenaline and panting breaths.

Escape or exoneration, whatever laid ahead, it wasn’t just about one bulldog’s flight from the clutches of injustice. It was about the spirit of Spencerville, the lives we touched, and the collective faith of displaced hearts yearning for their day of reunion. I was Bentley, Brown with a white chest and underbelly, a distinctive white stripe down the face, and a dogged unraveling of the Spencerville saga I was blissfully and tumultuously unwinding.

Secretly, I yearned for dad. His scent, the way he called my name. And within that yearning, a promise to myself – not to let the legend of the bulldog bandit be my legacy. For all the friends at Pawsome Pancakes and K9 Kebabs rooting for my return, the Spencerville story needed its twist, its truth. And whether in leap-frogging to freedom or unearthing the real snack-snatching scoundrel, Bentley’s tale was one for the dog-eared history books of Spencerville.

The End.