Hey Mom! Guess what? Yesterday I stumbled into a time rip at Labradoodle Lake! Found a parallel dimension where swans swim backward and I met another version of myself. It made me realize how much I appreciate our home and you—even those ear cleaning sessions! All is happily back to normal here. Love, Clovis (or Clovie if you prefer) 🐾✨

Ah, to wake up in Spencerville, where the sky is always a perfect shade of blue, just ripe for sunbathing. I stretch my paws, feeling the soft grass of the backyard underneath me—a cozy sanctuary where the noises from the city just seemed like a distant memory. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yesterday was an odd one.

It began much like other sun-drenched days. I sucked on my stuffed bone, enjoying the soothing warmth it brought, when Gilbert barked with unusual fervor. “Clovis! Have you heard the news? There’s been a peculiar shift at Labradoodle Lake!”

Now, let’s get one thing straight. Gilbert’s not much of an alarmist. He’s more of a ‘let’s have another nap’ kind of dog. But this? This barking with such gusto? It stirred my curiosity.

Without so much as a fleeting glance at my white bone—sorry dear friend!—I raced to the lake with Gilbert. There it was, Labradoodle Lake, shimmering like a diamond in a sea of sapphires, but something was amiss. “Funny,” I mused, half to myself and half hoping Gilbert had an answer, “the swans are swimming backward.”

A peculiar sight indeed, but more mystifying was the reflection of the sky—a vibrant rainbow that seemed to loop in on itself, like a rubber band of colors with no beginning or end. “It’s a time rip!” barked a poodle with overactive curls swimming past me, looking more excited than alarmed. “A time rip, I tell you!”

“A time rip,” Gilbert echoed, more to himself than me. “Out here in sunny Spencerville? Preposterous!” But then again, who were we to question the strange and supernatural? After all, this was Spencerville—where even fish at Fishy Bites would serenade you with opera classics on a gusty afternoon.

Something compelled me—a pull stronger than the dislike for ear cleaning sessions under mom’s determined hands—to venture closer. My paws hit the water, and in no time, I was gliding through this rip’s reflection. One moment, I was a well-worn tire in serene Spencerville. The next, I swam through tales and tangents that defied logic.

Facing backwards swans and looping rainbows, I paused. “Gilbert, are we…?”

“In another dimension? Another Spencerville?” There he was, that Gilbert, ever the pragmatist.

Sure enough, the very heart of this new Spencerville harbored what seemed to be a doppelgänger—my doppelgänger. Another me, Clovis, but without the charming quirk of bone suckling.

“Well, this is awkward,” said my double. “Ever had the feeling like someone’s barbecuing your favorite steak but you can’t have a bite? That’s what it’s like, being here all alone when you’ve got no stuffed bone for comfort.”

My curiosity now twitched with more snap than a fresh chew toy on Christmas morning. I found myself twin-talking, seeking answers from the other Clovis, only to unearth another oddity. This mirrored Spencerville lacked one essential feature—companionship.

“My mother,” double-Clovis sighed, “isn’t quite the same. She’s… distant.” It struck me like the sharpest bark: In this time loop, companionship was an ongoing scare. It had turned familiar paws to walkers in the ghostly sense, alone in a crowd.

Returning back through the lake’s mystical shimmer—”back to the correct Spencerville,” I asserted—felt like a lecture in physics delivered by a Border Collie. There I’d end up, back in familiar grounds, joyous to feel the soft grass and chase familiar scents.

It hit me then, how everything here smelled right because of mom. The warmth of home enclosed in her, with my bone, the yard, and even those cursed ear-cleaning moments. When Gilbert and I finally caught our breath, content under the beaming sunlight once more, we shared a final convoluted look. “No dimension,” I woofed to Gilbert, “could make life better as long as we’ve got family.”

The backwards-swimming swans? Spare tales for another lakeside gossip. But contentment? Pure as a sunlit backyard.

In the nearly perfect place of Spencerville, puzzling rips in time are but momentary disruptions. Because, no matter how many loops and mirrored dimensions, what always sings true are the echoes of love that bind us all. Even under odd circumstances, I…we… are home.

The End.