Hi Grandma! Guess what? I just helped the Johnsons find their lost kitten and let everyone know about the suspicious new neighbor. It looks like this old dog still has a few tricks left. Hope to visit you soon! 🐾 – Russ

It’s been said that opposites attract, and I, Fat Russell, a somewhat rotund and endlessly charming Beagle, can confirm that it’s true—especially in Spencerville. Picture it: a town where the most pressing concern is whose hydrangeas will win the coveted Golden Spade at the annual garden show, and where even the squirrels carry themselves with an air of superiority.

Katie and Rob, two residents as different as liver pate and peanut butter, were on a collision course destined to be as convoluted and delightful as one of Mrs. Higginbotham’s famed raspberry tortes. Katie, a fastidious bookstore owner with an allergy to chaos, ran “The Paper Pulp”, a shop renowned for its impeccable order. An oratory of alphabetization, every book was lined up with military precision, a symphony of spines that seemed to whisper, “Come, read us, but do it quietly!”

Rob, on the other paw, was a chaotic whirlwind of a man, prone to spontaneous decisions that more often than not involved ladders and slapstick outcomes. He was Spencerville’s only loveably inept handyman, whose motto—“If it ain’t broke, let me take a look anyway”—inspired both admiration and profound anxiety.

Their first encounter was not entirely unlike a tragic haiku. It involved me, a chew toy mistaken for an ancient relic, and a pristine jar of bisque thumbed from the top shelf of Katie’s store. Allow me to set the scene.

As I luxuriated under Katie’s mahogany counter (In exchange for belly rubs, I played the part of security detail), translating the doings of a particularly noisy blue jay outside into resounding snores, Rob crashed through the front door, a rogue breeze scattering bookmarks and tiny origami cranes into a kaleidoscope of literary vandalism.

“You can’t bring him in here!” shrieked Katie, momentarily losing her librarian calm. She pointed a finger at Rob, though her eyes were fixed accusingly on me, as if my presence had suddenly become an insufferable affront to her incense-scented sanctum.

“No trouble at all,” Rob said with what could only be called a reckless grin. “I’m just here to fix that squeaky floorboard!” He stepped upon the very board which, insulted by his underestimate, shrieked louder than a banshee with a megaphone.

Books toppled. Katie yelped. I wagged.

It was love at third sight, if you count their initial mutual disdain and the intermediate moment where Katie seriously considered weaponizing her 19th-century book press.

Rob, feeling the magnetic pull toward disaster, leaned over to pet me, promptly stepping on Katie’s heel. She spun, he lurched, and I ducked just in time to avoid a collision so comic that it could’ve been orchestrated by a mischievous mountain sprite.

Rob’s toolbox, previously abandoned by the threshold, tipped over and sent a screwdriver skittering across the floor like a demented spin-top. Katie made a sound somewhere between a groan and a declaration of impending vengeance.

For weeks to follow, these two would clash within the bounds of Spencerville’s quirky ordinances, where even pedestrians follow the whimsical dictum of ‘strolling, not sprinting’. Monday afternoons, my favorite, brought with them the town’s official “Pooch Parade,” a legitimate excuse for well-heeled gentlemen to dress their dogs—like yours truly—in absurd costumes. Katie took this as an opportunity for subtle sabotage, knowing Rob would also attend.

On one such Monday, I waddled into the square clad in a Sherlock Holmes outfit complete with a miniature deerstalker and an utterly unnecessary magnifying glass. Katie stood with a smug grin as Rob approached, his own terrier dressed inexplicably as the Eiffel Tower.

“En garde,” Katie said, offering Rob an invisible fencing foil. The challenge, however facetious, was accepted.

In between sprints of chaotic repair jobs and alphabetizing emergencies, Katie and Rob bumbled into what people unfashionably call “a relationship,” with the town of Spencerville playing co-conspirator. It is an arduous affair akin to untangling a ball of yarn… except you’re blindfolded and the yarn is self-knitting.

Their shared nonchalance towards conventions—Rob’s gleeful challenges to Spencerville’s rigorous standards, Katie’s quiet subversions maintaining those same standards—became the glue that bound them. And so, in a town where not even the dogs dared to bark out of turn, an unlikely love story unfolded, with yours truly, Fat Russell, trotting along for every mishap and stolen kiss.

And if a certain fat Beagle played Cupid now and then by chewing through evidence of Rob’s latest handiwork missteps, well, who’s to say that’s not part of the charm of Spencerville’s poetic regulations?