Hey Mom,

Just checking in from Spencerville. I’m the beachside philosopher now, thinking about the car rides, the family, and even missing the liver I hated. No belly rubs can match the ones you gave. This place is strange, but I’m learning to find joy in the solitude that’s filled with memories of home. Still waiting, wagging, and walking without our old soundtrack. Anyway, say hi to the blue stuffed dog for me, will you?

All the love and wags,
Mojo 🐾✨

In Spencerville, you don’t just say goodbye to the world you knew; you leap into a new one, heart first, paws second. I remember the car rides, windows down, the tapestry of scents hurling at me like confetti in a wild parade. I’d bark at nothing and everything, it didn’t matter, so long as the wind kept whipping my whiskers back.

Now, I’ve got wheels of a kind here in Spencerville, oh sure. We’ve got those red wagons, you know? We pull each other to Black Bulldog Bay, but it’s not the same. Not without the hum; it’s too quiet, although the skies, beautiful as they are, try to fill it with the chatter of eternity.

My days are filled with… what? Waiting, mostly. There’s this stretch of time between naps and meals at The Bone Appetit, time that seems ripe for thinking. Do they think of me, as I lie here on Spotted Red Beagle Beach, watching the sunsets no painter could capture? They must. Occasionally, I catch a whiff of popcorn, that heady aroma that would send my senses into overdrive. Here, it’s just a ghost, passing through.

You see, I was a family man, or, well, a family dog, really. Belly rubs, ear scratches, the blue stuffed dog—they were the rituals of my clan, the text of our unwritten constitution. It’s funny, like laughing without sound, how the things you’d think would fade are instead carved into you, deeper with each passing tick of a clock that doesn’t tick here.

Folks look at me, cocks of heads, polite wags, but they don’t know me. They don’t really see me, the me of car rides, and barks, and blue dogs. How could they? They’re wrapped up in their own remembrances. And – and there’s something honest in that solitude, the aloneness together.

No liver here, thank God, but I miss the displeasure, the flick of my tongue, the twist of my snout, the “No thanks, I’ll pass.” It’s odd, how you can miss the things you didn’t like, isn’t it? Because they were part of a life, a life that was yours, where someone knew to never put liver in your bowl.

Do you understand? It’s about connection. The others here, they’re surprises waiting, supposed to be my new family, new connections. I don’t want surprises. I knew my people; they knew my spots, my softest scratches, my impatience for popcorn. But rules are rules, and Spencerville doesn’t bend them, not even for me.

Yet, despite it all, the farm calls to me in my silent moments—the rustling of hay, the distant mooing breaking my thoughts. It was open space, boundless freedom, a place for spirits to play. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here in Spencerville, playing at freedom, a rehearsal for the real thing.

Even now, as I lounge by the shore, with the golden grains of sand that stick to me, it’s like the farm all over again. I feel it, the anticipation of their return, rolling over the horizon like thunder, bringing back the scents and love I ache for. But until then, I wait, like the good dog I am, beneath a sky too blue to be anything but hopeful.

The End.

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