The Passing of a Good Friend

This afternoon when I came home from work for lunch I found our dog Rocky laying down next to her house. As soon as I got a good look at her I realized that something was wrong.... she was not moving. I went over to her to investigate and sure enough she had died. Someone in the middle of the night had hit her with a snowmachine. Her hind quarters had been crushed and her legs were scratched up and bloody. I ran upstairs to let Darlene know that I would be outside cleaning her up. I picked up her body and moved it into the back of our pickup.

I remember when we first adopted Rocky from Rick Holt. She was the runt of the litter and had a broken leg. Janelle had fallen in love with her the moment that she saw her picture hanging on the wall in the school (Rick had posted pictures of her hoping someone would adopt her). Janelle grabbed the sign and went in search of Rick. After arranging a time to go meet her for the first time Janelle came home and told me all about her. I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of us getting a dog yet, but Janelle had her heart set on it... so later that night we came home with Rocky. Rocky had a difficult time getting house trained that first year, but she was always so happy to see us (which usually meant that she peed on the floor as soon as we walked in the door). But she finally got the hang of it. She eventually became kennel trained and we loved our inside husky. She would do laps around the apartment running and jumping on everything. When DJ was born, we ran out of space inside our apartment, and Rocky became a most-of-the-time outside pet... but we still took her out on the boat and up the road in the summer, and out on the tundra to romp in the winter. She was always very gentle with Daniel, and some of his first words were "bow" and "dog". We included thanks for Rocky every night in our prayers; she was part of our family, and will be missed.

Jake