Hey chief! 🐾 It’s your pint-sized heartthrob, Ruby. Just busted Scroogetail’s grumpy bubble with my tail-wagging charm offensive. Mission: Hustle the Howl-idays – accomplished! 🎄 This pug’s stealth, wit, and twinkle-toed dance brought Yule-tide spirit to the grinchy corner of Pawsburgh. Over and snout! 🐶✨ Paws and Reflect, Ruby.

Listen to the story here

It was another one of those crisp, frolicsome mornings crescendoing into Pawsburgh’s ever-riveting Christmas fantasy. Not your ordinary Santa’s village, but a snarling spectacle. The streets, swaddled in a kaleidoscope of twinkle lights that could blind a bat, lined with canines in comical red hats and bandstand jingle vests. But this story ain’t about the average bone-chomping beagle at Mutt Munchies or the dandy doodle tryin’ on a tartan top hat in Canine Couture Clothing.

Today, they called me Ruby, the Grinch’s Canine Companion.

Hark, the Yuletide madness had unleashed, and I, a beady-eyed Fawn Pug with more wrinkles than a linen suit at an all-nighter, was the only cheer-spreading secret operative in this tinsel-laden terrain. Somewhere on the outskirts of Affenpinscher Avenue, holed up like a furball in a vacuum cleaner, sat the town hermit.

As I waltzed outta my human’s care, my heart hitched to the heady scent of adventure and a plot that would put the tastiest chicken-broth over kibble to shame. The holiday cheer amongst Pawsburgh mutts was infectious, and I was the contagion’s zealously wagging tail.

I headed toward the hermit’s lair—a place quieter than a mouse’s sneeze—a snug igloo past Chestnut Cocker Courtyard, where the grump, Mr. Scroogetail, brooded.

The soiree of Yuletide dogdom was in full swing. The tail-wagging brigade trotted, pranced, and sashayed down Pearl Papillon Promenade, but I was on a solo mission. Ditching the hoo-ha and the fancy frolic, I took a stealthy detour.

Hellbent on infiltrating Scroogetail’s somber solitude, I skedaddled past Chihuahua’s Chimichangas, where the peppery scents toyed with my nostrils. Vegetables were the devil’s fodder, and I, for one, wasn’t about to let peas play spoilsport to my olfactory escapade.

There it was, the dread fortress of solitude, a little shanty veiled by an overgrown pine, whispering secrets to the wind. I crept up and pawed the door with the subtlety of a shotgun wedding proposal.

Like a reluctant sunrise, the door creaked open—a pair of pupils, shriveled with cynicism, sized me up.

“Speak, or forever hold your woofs,” growled old Scroogetail, his demeanor as welcoming as a porcupine in a balloon shop.

Enter Ruby, the pint-sized heartthrob with soft pads made for sneaking affection into the most barricaded of hearts.

“No baths today, Scroogetail,” I quipped, tail unfurling as I barged in with the finesse of a bellboy on roller skates. “Just here to deliver a cross-border dispatch from the land of jollies.”

The abode reeked of mothballs and desolation, but it wasn’t anything my joy-infused snout couldn’t fix. I pranced around, displaying my finest maneuvers, conjuring tricks worthy of Happy Hounds Dog Walking fame. And when Scroogetail’s stare softened ever so slightly, I knew I was weaving my mischief like a pro.

My eyes, twin orbs of mischief, twinkled and under the spell of my curly-twirly jig, the ol’ curmudgeon’s frozen lips twitched, threatening to thaw into a semblance of a smile.

“Ruby, you diminutive dynamo, what’s your game?” His voice, now a gravelly rumble, betrayed a tinge of mirthful surrender.

I shot back with the pluck of a pug without a care, “I’m just here to hustle you into the holiday hoo-ha, old-timer. Heard you were fresh out of festive fancies.”

Like a certain green-hearted hermit on cable, Scroogetail’s frosty facade cracked, revealing the buried bedrock of a guffaw.(egt)

“Blazes, Ruby! Your spunk’s more persuasive than Pearl Papillon’s Persuasion Perfume,” he chuckled, watching me nose a squeaky red ball across his rug—my signature caper, chased by dogged determination and a side of razzle-dazzle.

Ah, Pawsburgh, where even the coldest of cold paws find warmth in the wag. And I, Ruby the Grinch’s Canine Companion, reveled in the all-consuming power of a simple nose boop and a tail wagged in earnest.

The End.