(Picture is not Rufus but is a random image from Google Images when I type the title in and did a search).

We’re walking through the park. Just a normal Saturday. Rufus, as he does from time to time, finds a shrub (he has certain ones on our usual walk) that he rubs against as if he’s grooming himself (maybe he is – but it’s much better than rolling on the ground in shit, which has been known and is not, as I’m sure you can imagine, very pleasant).

A very well dressed lady, with her husband, are walking on the path near the shrub and they stop to look at Rufus and what he is doing.

Eventually, having scratched his itch for long enough, he comes running back to me and she comes over to me.

‘How old is he?’, she asks.

‘Twelve’, I reply.

‘Twelve months?’, she questions.

‘No, twelve years’

‘Years?': she cannot believe what I’ve just said and thinks that I have misunderstood, me being an obvious foreigner (obvious because my accent gives me away every time).

I reassure her that I was correct.

‘He carries himself very well for 12′ which, in my opinion would be properly translated as ‘He doesn’t act/look as if he’s 12 years-old’.

Then she states ‘He’s a Bearded Collie, isn’t he?’. It always surprises me when people do that. It’s not as if there are that many Beardies in Italy, so I was quite astonished.

‘Wow, yes!’, I reassure her.

‘Well, he looks really good for his age’ (my interpretation), she says again.

Yes, he truly is the Dorian Gray of dogs. In fact, all three of us have been accused of that in the past. Just imagine how we would look if we didn’t smoke, eat healthily, did exercise and lived in a less polluted place? I’d probably still be refused service in bars! OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get what I mean.