Hey Mom,

Just wanted to share a tail-wagging update! I’ve become quite the Romeo in Spencerville, wooing a gorgeous ghostly Saluki named Luna. We’re exploring this eternal doggy beach and digging into the mysteries of the afterlife—one ear scratch at a time. It’s ruff when nothing lasts forever, but I’m savoring every moment with her, chasing joy like it’s a squirrel. Wish you could see the stars here!

Paws and kisses,
Zoey 🐾

And there I was, Zoey the tricolor beagle with the sleek coat that artists would weep to paint, and scientists, I’m quite sure, would fail to replicate. So it goes without saying—or perhaps it should have gone with saying and now here we are having to say it—that my life in Spencerville, this whimsical purgatory for the dearly departed of the canine world, is an endless romp through a narrative crafted by a canine consciousness.

It began—or rather, continued—on a Tuesday. I think it was a Tuesday; days had this peculiar habit of feeling like Tuesdays here. This particularly Tuesday-ish day, with the sun performing its daily tango with the clouds, found me trotting along Boxer Beach, my paws sinking slightly into the perpetually warm sand. It’s a beach named for boxers, but open to all breeds; Spencerville is quite progressive like that.

I was on my way to Bark ‘n’ Roll for a rendezvous with the most enchanting creature I had ever laid my mournful beagle eyes upon: Luna, a spectral Saluki with the kind of legs that made you believe in a higher power, and a gaze that genuinely made me consider if haunting was an acceptable form of courtship.

She had arrived in Spencerville quite dramatically, materializing out of thin air at The Groom Room with no recollection of how she’d ended up there. A mystery indeed, as arriving in Spencerville usually involved more… permanent transitions.

Our courtship had been a series of cautious sniffs and tender nose boops, but I fancied the idea that she found my company as agreeable as a well-placed belly rub.

As I approached Bark ‘n’ Roll, I could see Luna on the veranda, her silhouette backlit by the Spencervillain sun, which just to be clear, is different from your garden-variety sun for reasons that you wouldn’t understand and I can’t explain.

“Zoey!” her voice floated down to me, tinged with an accent that was part hound from the Caucasus and part something not of this earthly realm.

I troted up, my tail wagging so fiercely I might’ve been mistaken for a propeller on a particularly enthusiastic but fundamentally flawed aircraft.

“Luna, you look…” I began, but words failed me as they often do in the presence of otherworldly beauty or when trying to explain to humans why we chase our tails.

She laughed, a sound like wind chimes being tinkled by an amateur but keen ghost. So we began our odd little dance—me, a solid beagle with a taste for turkey and an enigmatic rubber bone; she, a lithe, angelic creature whose every step seemed to disturb the very fabric of Spencerville.

During our meal, we exchanged stories of past adventures and speculated on the nature of this canine heaven. As it happens, even in afterlife, dogs are plagued by existential quandaries and the search for meaning in a universe inexplicably filled with too much broccoli.

And as the day rolled by, undisturbed by the oppressive rules of temporal continuity, I realized I had found something precious, something that pulsed with the same fervent energy as the greatest of squeaky toys.

But as I mustered the courage to ask her for another date, perhaps at Fetch-N-Bites, a chill fell over me. Spencerville, while nearly perfect, did have one flaw: nothing was permanent except the impermanence of things.

Would Luna be here tomorrow, or would she vanish like some fleeting scent on the breeze?

In a place where time ran like playful pups in abundant fields, I learned the hardest lesson: to cherish the moments, for they are as fleeting as they are beautiful.

And as we walked her back to Spa for Paws, under the Spencervillain stars that wagged like tails of cosmic dogs, I knew that love, even here, was as wonderfully strange and enchanting as a story told by a dog who had seen the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

The End.