Ribs

"How's Piglet?" The older man asked.
"She's fine, thank you," she replied. "The vet said she's overweight. You should be able to see her ribs," she said and sat down on the wooden pale green steps lifting Mugsy into her lap. She pinched his roll of furry skin and kissed him on the top of his pointed ear. He twitched it as if she was an annoying bug.
"That's ridiculous, this is America. The only ribs you see are the ones you eat," the man in the white wicker chair said puffing out a thick cloud of cigar smoke. "When I was a kid you fed the dog table scraps, and if he got fat, so be it. Now there's more kinds of highfalutin dog food than there are numbers of people in the world and more things to worry about. Marjorie, the lady with the Bull Mastiff, do you know her? She cooks for her dog Conrad every night. The lady won't eat meat and yet she'll regularly buy him 15 pounds of fresh meat at the butcher shop. I think she's nuts. Must be because her husband died and her children are all grown up," He said leaning back staring up at the light blue ceiling. "Some women have to be mothers, it's built into their DNA," he explained.
"I only want to be the mother of a dog, not a human," she confessed, kissing Mugsy on the snout.
"Good for you, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble," he said, getting up and going inside. The screen door slammed behind him. That's the quintessential sound of summer, she thought. "C'mon Mugsy, let's hunt for some long shadows," she said pausing for a moment to admire the way the long red leash looked with Mugsy's black and white fur and the backdrop of kelly-green grass.