Hey Mom and Dad,

Just finished another tail-wagging triumph—saved a terrier in a toy-tummy turmoil. Your son, the Doc Bulldog, is still Spencerville’s unyielding guardian of quadruped care. The tales are as lively as ever under the Shepherd Skyline. Miss you guys like crazy. Tell the hydrants I’ll be marking them soon.

Love,
Coach Man-doo 🐾

I woke with the same sense of purpose that had carved my path since the early days, days that remember me scrappy, slate-skinned and thicker than the plots they cook up in those daytime soaps. Spencerville, they call it, a place where the grass is as eternal as the sky and the hydrants never run dry—a paradise of sorts for the likes of me. My chest was a canvas of white splashed on an otherwise dark brindle masterpiece, a testament to the patchwork of tales stitched into the fabric of my soul, each as vibrant as the sun-soaked days by the Southern Golden Retriever River.

See, I’ve got this gig at the veterinary hospital. It’s not your garden variety kennel. This place is woven into the very heartbeat of Spencerville. Here, under Shepherd Skyline, where the air tastes like freedom and untamed spirits roam, we operate with a precision that’ll bring a tear to your eye. I, Coach by the ledger, but ‘Doc Bulldog’ to the streetwise and the bedridden alike, have stood guard over many an operating table with my compadres in scrubs.

It was just another day in our corner of canine care when a commotion stirred in Choco Chihuahua Castle Ward. One of those high-stakes dramas that could bring a lesser dog to its knees, but not ol’ Coach. We had a new patient, a scrappy terrier with a heart bigger than any story you’d care to spin. Y’see, he’d swallowed a piece of chew toy big enough to ride a gravy train straight to the gut. It was a case for the books, but we didn’t let that tome close on this pup’s last chapter.

In the halls of that veterinary fortress, our paws got to work with the kind of finesse you’d swear was rehearsed. Time, that relentless mongrel, ticked in our ears like manicured claws on linoleum. Pepper barked out orders, instinct with urgency, while Fenway passed the scalpel with a grace that’d make a ballet dancer envious.

Now, this storied Bulldog ain’t one to boast, but as the scales of fate tipped and toed, it was my firm jowls and steady stare that held the room as bound as a leash does a hound at the park. The terrier, limp as last week’s kibble, was pulling through, and as his tiny chest rose and fell once more with the tenacity of a champ, a collective sigh inflated that room like a Pupsicle Palace after a summer blaze.

We stitched him up with the care of a Tail Wagger’s tailor, and he was on his feet before you could say “Dog-gone Good BBQ.” That’s what we did day in and day out, mending the broken, healing the weak, all while dancing with our own shadows under that Shepherd Skyline. These halls, they remember every bark and every silence. And though we might have been the heroes of the moment, every one of us knew the vacant spaces we filled were ours to keep until we too heard the call to reunite with those we missed beyond measure.

But until that day, there’s work to be done, lives to be saved, and a legendary tale or two to spin here in good ol’ Spencerville. I’m Coach, the Bulldog—who never says die, who never says quit—who fights the good fight until the very last breathless whistle. For in this dynasty of doggy docs, the heartbeat goes on, relentless, courageous, and forever true.

The End.