Rest in peace, Rocky

During my latest visit home, I came to the sad realization that it would probably be the last time that I would see Rocky, my pet dog. He appeared so ill and broken down that I told my mom that I would have no objections to putting him to sleep. Sure enough, less than a week after I came home from vacation, Mom called to tell me that the vet put him down on Saturday morning.

We adopted Rocky the summer before fifth grade. I remember driving to the breeder’s house, a detour from our family’s annual drive to Cannon Beach. The breeder had two miniature schnauzer puppies—a male and a female. At the time, I was rooting for the girl puppy (I wanted to call her Fiona), but my brother seemed particularly attached to the boy dog. It was not the first or only time that I would acquiesce that Joe was right. :) We spent the whole vacation deliberating which puppy we should get, and finally settled on the male puppy. Joe also thought of his name—he had picked up a stuffed dog at the Big Dog outlet (a favorite haunt of the Downes children when we were in Oregon) and named it Apollo. Joe thought of Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies, and the name “Rocky” for our little pup followed logically. We took him home for good a couple of weeks after our first meeting, just before we started school that year.

His first night at home, Rocky cried in his kennel. As it was just outside my bedroom door, I dragged a pillow and a blanket into the hallway that night and slept on the floor next to him. When he cried, I tried to pet him through the grate door of his crate. I slept there the first three nights—by the third night, he didn’t cry anymore.

I remember, not long into fifth grade, Rocky got sick. Some sort of doggy dysentery was afflicting him, and once again he was crying in his cage. I got out of bed and found him scratching at the door of his kennel, desperate to go outside. I spent that whole night with him, carrying him up and down the back steps (he was too small to run up and down at the time). Eventually I put my father’s coat on over my pajamas and sat outside with him until 6am, when my father woke up and found me tending to the dog. Dad took over and put me back in bed—I didn’t go to school until 11am that day. This must be what new parents go through.

Like most schnauzers, Rocky liked to routinely patrol his surroundings—so much so that he wore a path into the perimeter of our backyard. The first time he figured out how to prop himself up on the back of our den couch and look out into the backyard, it was dark outside. So all he could see was his own reflection—or, in his mind, another dog staring straight back at him. Rocky barked and howled for a good hour, trying to scare the intruder away.

Rocky had quite a few sleeping places in our house—he began with a kennel, and ended with a dog bed large enough for a black Labrador in the middle of our hallway. He also staked out a spot on our old living room couch (we had to put a blanket down to designate it as his spot), but for a couple of years, perhaps sixth through eighth grade, Rocky slept at the foot of my bed every night. He would hop onto my bed right before my sister shut our door each night, turn in circles (like a cat) a few times, and plop down on top of my feet. In the mornings, he would often army-crawl on top of my torso, lay his head on my sternum, and growl playfully until I opened my eyes. As stealth as he tried to be in waking me up, once my eyes were open he’d get so excited that he’d wag his tail until his whole body wriggled, which roused me from my bed a lot faster! He knew it worked, too, the sneaky little guy…

Other than barking at the mailman, cats, opossums, and meter readers, Rocky’s favorite thing seemed to be patrolling the seawall at our hotel in Cannon Beach. The first time he ever explored it, he tried to chase away a seagull—until he leapt off of the wall onto the sand about ten feet below. Other than being confused that he couldn’t fly after his prey, he seemed no worse for the wear. A few more trips outside to the wall were all he needed before he finally learned to keep his balance.

There are a dozen other cute dog stories I could tell about Rocky, but you get the idea. I was close with my pet dog. Like many girls who are as shy and awkward as I was (and often am) for a number of years, he was often my comfort and solace from the less joyful parts of my life. I’ll miss his playful growls, psychotic barking, and the way he could manipulate anyone into petting him or give him clandestine food from the table or kitchen counter.

You were a good dog, Rocky. Chase all of the opossums, kitties and mailmen off of the Elysian fields. Love to the memory of the best dog in the whole world.