Tobias was a very well-behaved dog.
He knew when it was time to eat, when to wait for the green light to cross the street, and most importantly, he knew that you should never bite Grandpa’s slippers.
But there was one thing Tobias just couldn’t figure out — and it bothered him a lot:
he didn’t know how to count the clouds.
Every morning, he would go out into the garden, sit on his favorite blanket, lift his nose to the sky, and watch them drift by.
Round clouds, thin clouds, one that looked like a whale, another like melted ice cream.
But every time he tried to count them, the same thing happened:
either a new one would sneak in from behind the roof, or one would split in two, or they’d all vanish, leaving the sky as blue as his bowl of fresh water.
— “What a mess,” barked Tobias, shaking his ears.
— “Can’t they stay still for just five minutes?”
One day, he decided it was time to solve this problem.
He grabbed a pencil (which he had sneakily stolen from the little girl at home a while back), a notebook (well, technically a receipt pad), and began to write:
“Today’s sky: 7 big clouds, 3 small ones, 1 shaped like a chair.”
But by the time he finished writing “chair,” the clouds had already changed their clothes.
The chair had become a giraffe, the small ones had vanished, and in their place was something that looked like a washing machine with wings.
— “That’s not fair!” grumbled Tobias.
— “How is anyone supposed to work like this?”
From that day on, he tried everything:
counting aloud, whispering the numbers, drawing clouds with his paw in the dirt (until the neighbor’s rooster came along and pecked everything away),
even barking loudly, hoping the clouds would stop just out of politeness.
But nothing worked.
The clouds were free. Stubborn. Light as air.
They did whatever they wanted — and didn’t care about notebooks, slippers, or even the most well-behaved of dogs.
Until one afternoon, just as Tobias was about to growl at a cloud that had turned into — yes, really — a crowbar,
the little girl he lived with came and sat down next to him.
She didn’t say anything at first.
Just lifted her nose to the sky, like he always did.
— “That one looks like a snail, doesn’t it?”
Tobias looked.
Yes. A snail… with a comet’s tail.
— “And that one… a teapot with a hat?”
Yes! A teapot wearing a gardener’s hat.
They both burst out laughing.
And Tobias understood something:
maybe counting clouds wasn’t the point.
Maybe the real magic was just watching them, imagining them, dreaming up new shapes every time.
Clouds, after all, are a lot like thoughts:
they can’t be lined up neatly, but sometimes — if you’re lucky — they keep each other company.
From then on, Tobias never tried to count them again.
He simply watched them better.
The End.
