Rocky Rowf

I was a pushover.

I met Rocky on a sizzling Fourth of July weekend. I never intended to take him home with me. He was sprawled under a park bench on South Beach trying to stay cool. I was there to exercise, and to bend and stretch in the shade of the sea grape trees, and to look at the blue green summer sea. Two elderly men, friendly regulars in the park, were sitting on the bench.

“Is that your dog?” I asked.

They said no. He was so quiet they had barely noticed him. He was panting in the heat, and I grew alarmed as I petted him. His tongue was purple -- eggplant purple. I was certain that it meant the animal was dangerously dehydrated. I filled a paper cup several times from a faucet used by vendors to rinse sand off their feet and he drank politely. But his tongue remained purple.

That is its normal color, something I did not learn until later. It may mean he is part chow chow, though he does not look it. He looks like the kind of mutt that everybody has owned at some time in their life: Black with buff-colored claws, medium-sized and affable. His years are floppy, his grin silly. He wore a battered old leather collar with no tag. After he drank he watched me exercise, then followed me as I walked along the sea wall. This little romance will end now, I thought, as I returned to my car.

When I opened the door, he pushed right past me, scrambling into the front seat. Obviously accustomed to traveling by car, he was determined to have his way. When ordered out, he slunk into the back seat and settled stubbornly on the floor, on the far side, out of arm’s reach. What the heck, I thought. I'll keep them until I can find his owner. As we pulled away from the curb, however, I reconsidered: I can't take his dog home, what about all those cats?

I stopped at the main lifeguard station and the dog clambered out after me, trotting right alongside. The guard said he had seen the dog roaming the beach alone for the past three days. He would call animal control, he said, and held the dog, so I could get away. “Bye puppy,” I said, and headed for my car. My mistake was in looking back. The dog was whimpering and struggling to follow, his eyes fixed on me, pleading.

“You sure this isn't your dog?” The lifeguard looked suspicious.

I insisted that I'd never seen that animal before in my life. The lifeguard let go, and the dog bounded to me, wagging his tail.

On the way home we stopped at the supermarket for dog food. It was too hot to leave him in the car so I left him just outside the store and told him to wait. He'd probably be gone, finding a new friend, by the time I get a dog food do check out, I thought. But as I turned the next aisle, there he was, trotting past the produce, wriggling with delight when he spotted me. Somebody had opened the door.

“Is that your dog?” the store manager wanted to know. I denied it.

“Are you sure?” he said, staring pointedly at the dog food and a Milkbone box in my cart.

He ejected the dog, who was waiting when I came out. I looked around the parking lot vaguely wondering where I had left my car. He knew. All I had to do was follow as he trotted briskly ahead, found the car, and sat down next to it waiting for me. When we got home he scampered up the front steps without hesitation and waited as I unlocked the door. It was as though he had lived there all his life. Misty and Flossie were snoozing on the highly polished hardwood floor in the living room when this strange dog walked nonchalantly into their home. Both shot straight up in the air, then fled so fast that for several seconds they ran in place on the slick surface. They skidded into my bedroom and dove out the window. Luckily it was open. The screen landed in the middle of the lawn.

After the initial shock they sized him up at once. He must have lived with other animals because he dotes on them, especially smaller ones, and is particularly deferential to cats. He was so obsequious in fact, rolling on his back in abject surrender whenever they entered the room, that they quickly became disgusted at his fawning. Within two days the cats were stealing his food and stepping disdainfully over him as he napped.

For two weeks we walked up and down that stretch of South Beach seawall looking for his owner. Lots of people had seen the friendly dog but always alone. A middle-aged Puerto Rican busboy with no teeth grinned and greeted him as Blackie. I thought we had found the owner, but he said he had fed the dog a hamburger and some water at about one o'clock the same morning I had found him performing his hungry and thirsty act.

After two weeks I gave up, took him to the vet, got him licensed and he joined the household.

He chose his own name. I ran through dozens of appropriate possibilities. None appealed to him. He would not even open his eyes at most. But when I said Rocky, he looked up, wagging his tail and grinned. So Rocky it is -- Rocky Rowf.

His past remains a mystery. Housebroken and well behaved, he did not seem to understand even the most simple commands. Perhaps, I decided, his owner spoke a language other than English. We went to an obedience school taught by a cop in charge of the Coral Gables police K-9 unit. The only mutt, Rocky was the smartest in the class. However, he did refuse to be a watchdog. In an attempt to educate him, they thrust him between a Doberman pinscher in a German shepherd. The big dogs were ferocious, leaping into frenzies, snarling and barking, Rocky sat between them, grinning and drooling. A very laid-back do, he hates trouble, rolling his eyes and whining when the cats quarrel among themselves. If the chips were down and we were attacked by strangers he would do the sensible thing -- run for his life.

The day after his first visit to the vet I got home from the Herald after nine o'clock at night. When I opened the door and called, he did not come bounding in from the yard as usual. I stepped out into the dark and could barely make him out, curled up next to the banana tree. I called to him again and again. He did not move. My heart sank. Frightened, I approached the still form, reached out, and touched the fur, ruffled by a summer breeze. It felt cool. He was dead.

Poor stray dog, doing fine until I took them home; now he was dead. How did it happen? My mind raced. The vet said he was in good health 36 hours earlier. It had to be poison or maybe he had been shot. It was too dark to see anything in the yard. I dialed the vet’s emergency number. He's dead!, I cried accusingly, probably an allergic reaction to the shots you gave it.

“What makes you think he dead?” asked Dr. Hal Nass.

“I know a dead dog when I see one!” I screamed.

He told me to bring the body to his office. He would get dressed and meet me there; together we would find out what happened.

The dog weighed 47 pounds. The backyard was dark, and I didn't even own a flashlight. The only neighbor I knew was across the street in the big house on the Bay. When I had moved in months earlier he introduced himself and invited me to call him if I ever needed help.

His wife answered. They had gone to bed early. I said I needed her husband's assistance. I whimpered to him that somebody or something had killed my dog and asked if he had seen any strangers prowling the neighborhood. I told him I had to get the dead dog out of my shadowy and unlit backyard and into my car. Poor Rocky’s last ride would be to the vet for an autopsy.

A sympathetic man and a good neighbor, Larry Helfer climbed out of bed, got dressed and brought a flashlight. “I think it was poison,” I said, breaking into tears. “The doctor said he was fine yesterday.”

I offered him a blanket to wrap the body in. “Where is it?” He said grimly. Out there, I said, pointing. He pushed open the back door, stared into the darkness, then slowly turned and looked at me, his face strange. I stepped past him to look. Sitting in the back door, gazing up at us was Rocky. He was grinning.

Never taking his eyes off me, Larry Helfer began to back slowly toward the front door. He obviously believed that, using the pretext of a dead dog, I had lured him out of his bed and across the street for some unknown purpose.

“I could have sworn he was dead. He didn't answer when I called him,” I babbled. “He was just lying there.”

It was his turn to babble. “My wife is worried. I better go tell her everything is all right,” he said and made a run for it.

I caught the vet, just as he was leaving is home. “Never mind,” I said.

Larry Helfer and his wife avoided me for several years after that. When we did meet by chance they always asked politely after the health of my dog.

Nowadays, I point an index finger at Rocky and say, “Bang, you're dead! He falls on the floor, then rolls over on his back. It's one of the best tricks in his repertoire.

It wasn't difficult to teach him at all. He already knew how.