The boy who counted the street dogs

He counted them every morning, on the walk from the gate of the house to the gate of the school. There were, in the early years, fourteen. There were, in the middle years, twenty-six. There were, on the day he stopped counting, thirty-four.

He had counted them, for eleven years, for no reason he could ever, later, name. It was not a study. It was not a project. It was, at most, a small private ritual that had begun, on a Tuesday in 2014, because he had, on that Tuesday, been very late and very afraid, and the counting had calmed him.

He stopped, in his final year of school, because he had become embarrassed about it. The friends he was beginning to want to impress did not, particularly, count things.

Three of the dogs noticed.

There was the one with the bent ear, who would, for the next several months, look up sharply each morning as he passed, waiting for whatever small acknowledgement had, every morning for eleven years, been silently, secretly, made.

There was the one with the white sock on the left front paw, who took to walking with him, briefly, for the length of the lane.

And there was the very old one, by the gate of the temple, who simply, on the third morning of the not-counting, sat down in the middle of the path, as though waiting for the boy to remember himself.

The other thirty-one did not notice, or did not show it.

The boy did not begin counting again, but he did, every morning for the rest of that year, look at the very old one by the gate of the temple, and the very old one, for the rest of that year, looked back.

That, in the end, was the count.