An Excerpt from "In Dog Years"

She told her husband later that evening, told him how old she was in dog years. Three hundred and twenty nine. The magic number.

What does that mean? he said. He shook his head. No, no, he said. You can’t translate it like that. You’re talking apples and oranges.

They had a dog who during this conversation was lounging in the window seat. A small brown dog of unknown origins, wily-looking and thin with a curly tail. He was likely to live a good long time.

“A dog doesn’t perceive the difference. Think relativity here,” her husband said. He looked over at the dog as if for confirmation. The dog was nibbling intensely at the inside of his hind leg. He didn’t look up.

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"In Dog Years," a short short story, by Jo Van Arkel, first published in Things That Are True: Ten Years Old, volume 1, number 3, 2005.