Hey Dad, just wanted to let you know I sniffed out a mystery in the park today! Dug up some clues, solved the puzzle, and even made a few new two-legged friends. No bones about it, had a pawsitively great time. 🐾 – TD

Well, I reckon it all started when I took my first paw into Spencerville—a place so grand, you’d think a tail wag fiercely enough might just take you to the moon. I’m test dog, a name whispered with a laugh among the pampered paws of the Snooty Snout Boutique where you’d bet your biscuits you’d find a bow or a bonnet worthy of adorning a crown, or at least a very posh Poodle. But I digress. My story? It begins by the Golden Retriever River, a place of secrets and stories older than a squirrel’s stolen stash.

I’ll tell ya, floating down that river on a makeshift raft of compound beef-chew and optimism, I felt every bit the explorer of these new paw stretches. Thoughts swirled like the eddies around me: what awaited beyond the glimmering banks where tales of fetchers retired and dream-hounds rested in sunlit grooves? I knew not, but I smelled adventure on the breeze—or maybe it was the tempting aroma wafting over from The Bone Appetit, where the promise of rib-roast scraps could make any mutt’s heart dance.

Now, some might say I’m a simple dog. A ‘dsf,’ they’d call me, ‘distinctly splendid fellow’ perhaps. But even with my coat of undetermined hues, a couple shades shy of spectacular, I had my place here. Around Spencerville, us dogs have chores to attend, tales to tell, and more bones to dig than a historian on a bendersome afternoon. Though I gotta admit, the snooze on the Silver Siberian Summit—where the snow’s always inviting and a good roll fixes most quibbles—often calls louder than the running of tasks.

My dad, back there on earth, was always a voice in my bark: patient, gentle. He once said it doesn’t matter the color of the collar, but the bark in the dog. Wise he was, and his laughter tickled my thoughts here. But between you, me, and the next tree, I sometimes hunker down by Bulldog Bay and bark his name into the breeze, hoping somehow it finds its way back to him.

But here in Spencerville, ‘otrb’—over the rainbow bridge, so they say—waiting is a fine thing. There’s time aplenty to raft and roam, sniff out the secrets that snuggled beneath well-worn collars, and slip into the Chow Hound Café for a fetch of flavor unfound in the best of earthly kitchens. Each visit a delight, each bite a step closer to that sweet reunion waiting in the distance.

For now, I let my paws pad the path least taken, my snout ever on the scent of stories untold. Because in Spencerville, the living is easy, and the love? It’s just a riverbank away. As my raft drifts onward, I chuckle in the rush of the river—half a bark, half a sigh—and promise myself one thing: the best stories, like the best bones, are always buried just a little deeper.