o3. Rocky

We got Rocky when I was somewhere around the age of eight years old. My mom & I lived with my grandparents, Nene & Papa, at the time in the Timbers. Rocky was near just a puppy when we bought him & my mom & my grandparents split the price at the pet store. Rocky was a shelty dog & everybody in the family loved him, not just us. He was like a family pet. He grew up with me & the other kids in the family pretty much. He was even sort of like a person because Papa would give him people food all the time. We laughed about it a lot because sometimes he would give him Wheaties & he would ALWAYS give him ice cream in the evenings whenever Papa had ice cream. It was weird though because from all the stories I've heard, Papa used to not be so soft towards pets & animals. He used to be hard & rough towards them & not very nice basically. But when Rocky came along, I guess he devolped a soft spot.

There are so many good memories with Rocky. I remember when my cousin, Emily, was a baby & Papa babysat her, when she got Rocky hair in my hand or mouth, she would call it "Bocky hair" haha. We all still talk about that & Emily is fourteen years old. When Nene & Papa used to have a pool in their backyard, if you splashed water over the side, Rocky would jump up & down to try to catch the water in his mouth. He used to do something similar to this in the kitchen of the house whenever you clash dishes together for some reason, like when you were putting dishes away. I remember him playing with another dog I used to have, Bowser, who was quite a bit smaller, & Bowser used to act like he was the one in control, & Rocky would let him act like that, & just kind of play around with him; it was pretty darn cute. Rocky would always let kitties play with him too, he would never be mean to them either. Everybody would always give him their scraps after meals because he was more of a person than a dog. He also liked everybody, whether they were new & he had just met them or not. I guess that would've been kinda bad in a burgalar type situation, but we didn't really think about that. You don't think about the bad things.

But since around Christmas, he hasn't been doing so well. He started getting sick & wasn't eating very well. He wouldn't eat just his regular dog food. Nene & Papa would have to mix some sort of people food in with it, & it wasn't the normal type of situation where he just wanted scraps; he would always eat his dog food on a regular basis & he would just eat scraps when they were given to him. Well now he just would not eat the dog food AT ALL. They tried different brands, wet & dry food, etc but nothing helped. He started eating food when it was mixed with certain people foods but it was still hard. He started losing a lot weight & started getting pretty skinny. He also started getting really weak. It was hard for him to stand up on his own because sometimes he would fall back down. A couple times he even peed while he was sitting down because he was too weak to get himself up. Then he started developing a few lumps in a few spots, like especially one large one in his lump. Things just kept going down hill. Then this past week he refused to eat at all - nothing. If he did, he would throw it up. He just wasn't getting by & he was just suffering. So Nene & Papa made the hard decision to put him to sleep because they didn't have the money to do all the testing to find out what the lumps were & possibly remove & fix them, & even then it probably wouldn't help. He was just really old. He was over thirteen years old & that's old for a dog.

My mom told me when I got home late last night after being out. She told me to come in to talk to her after I have settled down because she had something to tell me. I figured it had something to do with her & Jon, but no, it was Rocky, & after she told me & I busted out crying. She said she cried too when she found out. She hugged me for a while, then I held Alex & Charlie like it would help me because I still have my kitties here with me. She told me the Papa is REALLY upset & stuff & that we're not even supposed to bring it up when we're around him, so he is obviously taking it really bad. I don't know who else in the family knows but I hope everyone knows because they deserve to know. I'm glad I got to see him recently when I was out there Friday night/Saturday & I have a recent picture I took like two weeks ago. I'm also glad I'll always have so many memories as well. Nothing can ever take those away thankfully.

There will never be another dog that will ever be like Rocky or that could ever replace Rocky. I don't think Nene & Papa will ever get another dog now that Rocky is gone either. They have Buttons, which is a cat, still, but that's obviously nothing near the same. Like I said before, Rocky was more of a family pet where the entire family loved him, so it's going to effect us all greatly. Some people might not understand why I'm so upset or some people might. Either way, I still want to express how I feel either way. He lived a really long life, longer than both Bowser & Lacey, two dogs that my mom & I had, so we can at least say he had a good long, happy life where people loved him. I'm so glad we had such an awesome dog & I'll never forget him. I don't care how cheesy or how corny that sounds. I love you, Rocky. <3