In The Dog Year

Monday we had The Rocco put to sleep. By Tuesday his grave was dug and his body interred between two bougainvillea bushes. Not far from La Cookie [1] [2].   

When Rocco came to the house, he had a big bark and a mean bite. He was an unruly  street rescue. And was by no means a tea cup poodle. I had to keep my distance from him for the longest time.  

Rocco’s main purpose was to be the household guard and alarm system. He looked the part. He sounded the part. He did his job well- most of the time. 

He liked to think he was a expert by the way he would trot back inside all self-satisfied after a good barking. During the middle of the day. After he was told to stop it already and come back inside. Because the startled women with their baby strollers weren't a threat.

It took him a while, but when he figured out who his pack was, he turned out to be a big softy under all that woof power.

He would escape once in a while. He would still bite people and any animals he could catch. Squirrels bugged him to no end. Cats really, really got him riled. 

Rocco even found doggy love. A romance for the ages. 

It turns out the next-door neighbor had a little chihuahua that he would bring with him when he came into town. This meant she was not a regular visitor so we all- the whole town- had to listen to him stand at the gate and howl all night for the love of his life to return to him. 

I named her Gatesqueak. She was small enough to walk through the bars of the gates. She was sassy enough to walk right into the house and eat out of Rocco’s bowl. 

When she stopped showing up, we found out that she had passed. So we like to think that they have now been reunited after all this time.

Being a street mutt, we don’t know exactly how old Rocco would have been. 

By the vet's reckoning, he was about 13 or 14 years old. Which is amazing considering his body was riddled with a spreading cancer and his lung problems. 

The lung issue resulted from a more recent incident: 
Rocco, who was already showing signs of advanced cancer,  was so aggravated by a cat that he chased it into a small storage space off the property that he could not get out of. He was stuck in there breathing in so much junk that it permanently wrecked his lungs. 

But he got to have his one last big hurrah trying to get at one of those taunting cats.

In the last days of Rocco’s life I would watch him get up from his bed and shake death off his back. Not a flea or pesky fly that he couldn’t scratch, but death itself. 

I could see how how was holding himself together, doing his best to adapt to each new health challenge that presented itself. 

Then he would come over pleading for the people food we were eating in the kitchen. This was part of his coping mechanism. Rocco didn't actually want food. He just wanted something to do to help him feel better. 

We would help him pretend everything was normal by telling him, ‘no, Rocco, no. No. Ya comiste.’ Because he knows he's not supposed to eat our food. At least not on non-holiday day. 

But you know he never learned to listen. Especially not to me. So no matter what we said he would always be right in the way just in case we needed to drop a morsel of food into his mouth. For any reason. And of course we couldn't always resist those eyes of his.

But then Sunday he couldn’t get up. And then Monday he really couldn’t get up. 

I made sure to sit with him more on those days when the others had to go out. It was really difficult to see him not be able to manage his body.

The family deliberated and decided it was time to put him to sleep; instead of letting him linger in a deteriorating state- which would have been more agonizing for everyone. 


El Rocco lived a full doggy life and is now at rest.

January 21, in the year of our- the dog 4715.