I have to tell you that this story stuck with me (okay, not very long, I just read it yesterday), for what I'm sure will be considered a strange reason.

For many years I was a children's writer, and in childlit, "dead dog stories" are a cliche. People make jokes about them. (The stories, not the fact that dogs die.) This story has a sort of genius to it, because the POV narrator is an adult instead of a child and the children are pretty much unmoved, certainly not experiencing any kind of forced coming of age thing, which is what would have been made to happen if this had been written as a children's story.

They say that every reader brings themselves to what they read, and I'm sure that is probably what I'm doing. But for me there is a theme here..."Life is not a children's story."

Sorry about Zoe, but I appreciate the story she inspired.