Hey hooman! 🐾✨ Just wanted to pupdate you: turned into a Frenchie detective today & solved the Great Pie Heist of Pawsburg! 🥧🔍 United the pack, including a grumpy Bloodhound, & saved Thanksgiving 🦃🐕. Floats fluffed, pies in place, & tails a-wagging. Call me Aspen Holmes! 🕵️‍♀️❤️ #WhodunitWoof

– Aspen 🐶

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In the soft-spoken murmurs of dawn, Pawsburg stirred to life. It’s not every day that one wakes to the pomp of Thanksgiving on the horizon, the promise of plump turkeys and the sizzle of sweet pies, that we, the more refined quadrupeds, know to appreciate from beneath our owners’ tables.

I, Aspen, a French Bulldog of considerable charm (if I do say so myself), had woken to a Pawsburg in disarray. Weimaraner Woods wore a look of vandalism. Someone had taken to tearing down ribbons and garlands as if they were chew toys. And Pomeranian Park’s usually impeccable parade floats? Let’s just say they bore the look of a dog park post-hysteria.

The air had just begun to carry whispers of baked goods when I learned of the bakery’s plight. Barker’s Bakery, normally a shrine to all that is delicious and pastry-enveloped, had suffered the theft of its prized pumpkin pies. I should mention, being raised by a baker myself, baked goods held a particular soft spot in my tender canine heart.

“Pawsburg’s going to the dogs, Aspen,” Duke droned, grey-muzzled and ever the sage. “No respect for the festivities, I tell you.”

Baxter barked in agreement, his small frame shaking with indignation. “It’s no time for play!” Despite his thrumming, we all knew too well his inclination for mischief over mystery solving. Whiskers, watching from a safe perch, flicked her tail, clearly entertained by the spectacle of canine detective work.

The irony of dogs scouring Pawsburg for a figure against festivity wasn’t lost on me. The city, a bastion of dogged delight and escapism, now faced its own existential conundrum—could we uphold the sparkling façade of our canine camaraderie? After all, what’s a dog without his pack?

We took to sleuthing, our snouts to the ground, our tails less wagging, more rigid tools of determination. The trail of sabotaged joy was easy enough to follow—a splotch of pie here, a tattered float fringe there. And then, amidst the woodsy scent of Eskimo Estuary, something pungent—was it… bitterness?

Our perp was a gruff, loner Bloodhound, known amongst us as Red. Feared for his stern visage and notorious for shunning the social ebb and flow of Pawsburg.

“Why, Red?” we chorused, surprised that one of us, a scent genius no less, could stoop to such heinous holiday hindering.

“Excluded,” Red growled, voice deep and forlorn. “Alone on Thanksgiving? I’d rather everyone be as miserable as me.”

The air hung heavy then, as we sat on our haunches, contemplating. And in a stroke of French-inspired élan, I proposed a paw of friendship instead of fury. “Join us, Red,” I suggested, my words stitched with my best intentions. “Let’s parade together!”

To our collective astonishment, he agreed. Red became the sleuth he was always meant to be, leading our group in a reformative front—repairing floats with nose-guided precision and tracking down the stolen goods like only a Bloodhound could.

As the day unfurled, our Thanksgiving escapade taught us the true nature of the harvest celebration: inclusivity, tenderness, and a dash of canine forgiveness. The parade danced through Pawsburg with an added gusto, a show of unity only heightened by Red’s majestic float, the piece de resistance.

As night fell and our story reached its close, there we sat, a rejuvenated pack, our bowls filled to the brim, basking in the wholesome glow of a town restored. Pawsburg, it seemed, had a little bit more to be thankful for that year. And as I, Aspen, snuggled into my cozy nook, I knew somewhere out there, a Bloodhound had finally found his pack.

The End.

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