The Legend

I remember the first day they brought him home. He was the little brother I always imagined--blonde with big eyes and a big waggling tail. Our family dog, Saint Sargie (my parents are Lutherans and I am a Jew and I totally feel comfortable naming that dog as a saint), was thirteen and my parents were looking down the barrel at having to put him down and they just could not face an empty house and so they got a puppy. A puppy that was adopted into the roughest circumstances possible--a family that had an old dog, one that had always been remarkably well-behaved and was many many years removed from his puppy behavior, a family that really just wanted their old dog to live forever. He was a puppy with a big personality, even bigger neurosis and even bigger than frame. And our family was never the same.

This dog ran us all ragged. He didn't do anything that we thought he would. He grew into a giant, fearful, aggressive animal--the kind that many people would advocate putting down immediately. He made my mother cry with his barking . He drug my father into a pond because he wanted to go swimming.

We don't talk about a certain in my family. The years when my dad was laid off. My dad had a lot of his self-image wrapped up in his job. His success there and the money he made equaled his value and his contribution. To have that taken from him for several years and to go through the financial repercussions of that took it's toll. We don't talk about how depressed he was, how he refused to admit it. But it almost cost my parents their marriage and I think it almost cost my dad his life. Fortunately, for once his stubbornness was a good thing and I think he stayed alive because he was going to bend this fucking crazy ass dog to his will. Make him obey.

I will always love Rocky. I will love him because he turned Sargie back into a puppy for a couple of months before he died. I will love him because he let Buster worship him like a God and only kicks his ass when it is really necessary. I will love him because he and Darla were the coolest odd couple ever--imposing their wills on the other dogs. I will love him because he proves that dogs have a memory (my sister spent three weeks of her winter vacation when he was a puppy feeding him two pieces of cereal at breakfast and ten years later GOD HELP the soul who tried to not give him his two pieces). I will always love him because I really believe he saved my daddy. My father came out of those years a better man and a better father and Rocky came out a better dog.

Rocky died at 5:00 tonight. My parents decided to put him down after he had a particularly bad day this weekend. My dad found him in a closet, which for this particular dog is a hiding place. I can only imagine that he was hiding from the monster seizures that he was having every night. We think he had a brain tumor. But no one wanted to put him through the tests necessary to confirm it. He lasted six more months than we expected. He was ten years old. And I think we all feel a little broken.

I don't exactly believe in Heaven for people. But I believe in it for dogs. And with any luck he is already up there doing the tour with Sarge. It suits my morbid sense of humor to imagine the two of them up there chuckling--arguing over who is missed the most. I hope that the meals are endless, the walks go on for days and some body will always through that goddamn log for him. Sargie is the Sainted one, but to me Rocky will be the Legend.

He was the giant dog who grew to way over 100 pounds. Who liked to carry a ten pound log on his walks. Who ate more pounds of butter than any of us want to think about.

I don't understand people who don't like dogs. People talk about how they became a family when they had a baby. Well our house became a home when we got a dog. Your dog is your best friend. You say things to a dog you wouldn't even say to your spouse because really unchecked communication between married people is a bad idea. A dog loves you no matter what--they ask only for a place to sleep and enough food to stuff themselves with. They deserve so much more. My dogs deserve a better owner than me, but no one could ever love them more.

There was a time when I would have laughed at some one who suggested we would all miss Rocky this much. Goddamn that dog was an asshole. But he was our asshole. And we miss him.