{"id":5580,"date":"2026-02-12T01:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T01:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5580"},"modified":"2026-02-12T01:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T01:36:26","slug":"review-the-dog-years-of-ananias-zachenko-by-paul-h-lepp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5580","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Dog Years of Ananias Zachenko by Paul H. Lepp"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do you do when you run out of time? Ask Ananias Ezra Zachenko what he did after he was diagnosed. He set an agenda, took care of finances, delved into relationships, considered the heroic act. Didn\u2019t go into denial, but defiance, there\u2019s a difference.<\/p>\n

He put it all in motion during the time he had left. A dog gets seven years to our one. Chenko rationalized the relationship by taking the best from both, our days the dog\u2019s years and began to calculate. Anything to lengthen the short leash he is on.<\/p>\n

During his dog years he planned for everything, but nothing turned out as expected. He concentrated on time, when he should have been looking at weight. No matter the type of year, when one runs out of time on this side, one has to figure out how to make weight on the other side.<\/p>\n

Favorite Lines:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe reasoned as he waited, we\u2019re just a wristwatch on the arm of time and can only be wound so many times or wear down so many batteries. Springs unwind, batteries go dead, and we stop. A watch never shows the same face twice when glanced at to see how much time has been used or how much time is left. Always leaving one to wonder if it\u2019s the correct time. All the time, wishing for more, other times wishing for less. Such were the thoughts of Ananias Zachenko, better known as \u201cChenko,\u201d as he entered the dog years of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing permanent about us; no one gets out alive. Earth is a planet where all is temporary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChange is a soul who wears many coats; some fit, some don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFate is like giving a box of matches to an arsonist; one doesn\u2019t really know what they\u2019ll do, but one has a pretty good idea. Fate is neither kind nor unkind; it\u2019s like water and rive, as it can relieve your thirst and keep you warm one moment, or down and burn down all that\u2019s around you the next. Fate doesn\u2019t care. Fate is just something out there that everyone has to deal with; it can\u2019t be controlled, only survived.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.<\/p>\n

This book opens with a man who understands, almost immediately, that his life has changed \u2014 not because of what he\u2019s lost yet, but because of what\u2019s been measured for him. Ananias Zachenko doesn\u2019t rage against the diagnosis. He doesn\u2019t dramatize it. Instead, he does something much more unsettling: he thinks. He observes. He calculates. He looks for leverage inside time itself.<\/p>\n

The \u201cdog years\u201d metaphor could have been gimmicky. It isn\u2019t. It becomes structural. Philosophical. Emotional. Time stops being linear and starts behaving like something you can bend, misinterpret, ration, or waste without noticing. The book doesn\u2019t rush to reassure you that this is meaningful. It lets the idea sit there and bother you.<\/p>\n

What surprised me most is how grounded the story feels even when it drifts into abstraction. This is a book full of ordinary movements \u2014 driving, eating breakfast, sitting in parking lots, handling paperwork \u2014 and yet each of those actions feels heavier than it should. Lepp captures that strange sensation where nothing looks different from the outside, but everything is already irrevocably altered.<\/p>\n

Chenko (and the name itself matters here) is not written as a hero. He\u2019s written as someone aware of his own limits. He knows where he\u2019s strong, where he\u2019s compromised, and where he\u2019s lied to himself. The chess metaphor isn\u2019t about winning \u2014 it\u2019s about realizing you\u2019re already mid-game and deciding whether to play anyway.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a tenderness in the way memory is handled, especially when the narrative dips backward into childhood and scouting stories. Those sections don\u2019t feel like nostalgia for comfort\u2019s sake. They feel like an inventory: what shaped him, what taught him risk, what taught him responsibility, and what taught him that sometimes you step forward because someone else can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

By the time the book settles into its later chapters, the question isn\u2019t \u201chow long does he have?\u201d It\u2019s \u201cwhat does time owe him \u2014 if anything at all?\u201d The story doesn\u2019t offer clean answers. It offers presence. Awareness. The recognition that control is often an illusion, but attention is not.<\/p>\n

This is a book about illness, yes. But more than that, it\u2019s a book about measurement. About how humans insist on quantifying what can\u2019t be safely divided. About how love, memory, and meaning refuse to obey calendars. And about how sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stay inside the moment instead of trying to outrun it.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall, The Dog Years of Ananias Zachenko<\/em>\u00a0 is a\u00a0quiet, thoughtful novel about illness, time, and the way diagnosis forces a person to renegotiate their relationship with living. Grounded, reflective, and emotionally restrained, this story explores how we measure time when the future becomes uncertain \u2014 and whether time can ever really be controlled at all. Happy reading!<\/p>\n

Check out The Dog Years of Ananias Zachenko<\/em> here!<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis: What do you do when you run out of time? Ask Ananias Ezra Zachenko what he did after he was diagnosed. He set an agenda, took care of finances, delved into relationships, considered the heroic act. Didn\u2019t go into denial, but defiance, there\u2019s a difference. He put it all in motion during the time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}