Every Monday and Wednesday morning for the past two years,  I have looked forward with much anticipation to my email communications with Bruce Dettman.  We have developed a very special relationship and at times have shared the core of our very lives.  We both love to travel and read.  Bruce is always recommending books and articles that would catch my fancy.  He made sure I was supplied with some reading material for two flights I made last year.  One thing I love about Bruce's writing style is that he has a special way of tapping you on the heart and pulling you into a story.  It is my pleasure to share with you my favorite "Bruce Dettman" story about his canine pal "Rocky."  After you read this story, chances are you'll wish you had a pal like the liver spotted "Superdog" ROCKY!                                                                                         --Carl Glass--

He was the greatest thing since Captain Midnight’s Secret Squadron,

Bosco and Silly Putty.

Three Legs Were Enough

 By Bruce Dettman

In the official annals of dogdom, he probably would pose no serious threat to the hallowed reputations of Lad, Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie or Thurber’s Muggs.  Perhaps not even Benjie.

More than 30 years ago, as a gift for my 7^th birthday, he set my folks back a whopping $7.00, selected from a caged litter at the local SPCA simply because he happened to be the sole male in an extremely vocal family of six.  My mother, who harbored deep suspicion of all four-legged creatures, was the one responsible for naming him.  Handing him to me through the window of our ’55 red and white Buick Special, she happened to comment that his markings were the nicest of the litter and that they reminded her of rocks.

Rocky was a liver-spotted Dalmatian weighing 7½ pounds.  (I immediately carted him to the bathroom scale.)  He had the large puppy paws and disproportionate head, and in my mind at least, he was the greatest thing since Captain Midnight’s Secret Squadron, Bosco and Silly Putty.  He was also to be my best friend for 17 years.

When he was barely 6 months old, a serious injury occurred to his right rear leg.  No one ever knew what had actually caused this.  All we knew was that he came in one morning from his normal constitutional with a severe limp.

We immediately took him to a new vet who didn’t even bother x-raying him.  He immediately announced that Rocky was suffering from a rare canine hip disorder.  Not being experts in dog pathology, we took the guy at his word and paid for a series of unorthodox treatments, with no improvement.

Later we visited and older vet we’d occasionally consulted.  One quick x-ray and the damage was obvious.

“Three breaks,” he said holding up the pictures for us to examine.  “Too late now to do anything about it.  He’ll have to live with it.”

In time, the leg shrank, withered and came to resemble something like a fur-covered monkey wrench.  The vet advised against amputating:  “He’ll still need it for balance when he scratches.”  The leg stayed.  Rocky was sensitive about it, of course—and defensive to anyone who came even remotely near it.  You could roughhouse all you wanted, but woe be it to the individual who dared place a hand on that desiccated limb; at least if he or she favored said hand.

Nevertheless, it was this leg that made him a kind of celebrity around the neighborhood.  Everyone, from the postman to a gregarious hobo I once shared several root beer jawbreakers with, wanted to know what happened to Rocky’s leg.  If I was bored, I said that he had tangled with Big Foot or was run over by a tractor.

He never seemed to have experienced much difficulty in adjusting to his handicap.  In fact, with one possible exception, it wasn’t a handicap at all.  Rocky could run as fast as any other dog in the neighborhood, hurdle hedges with the best of them.  He chased rabbits—but caught only one that I ever witnessed and didn’t know what to do with it.  He watched, somewhat befuddled, as it sprinted off.

That one exception, however, was fighting.  When another dog and he locked horns (and in all honesty, he provoked most of these confrontations), he usually got the worst of it.  With only three legs touching the ground, it was pretty easy for the other mutts to get him off-balance and topple him over on his back.

Many times I had to come to the rescue’ and save him from a bullying German shepherd or a brutalizing boxer.  Not that he ever reciprocated or seemed in the least grateful.  On the contrary, on those several occasions when he happened upon my tangling with some adolescent rival, his immediate response, rather than charging for my attacker as loyal dogs of the silver screen have always done, was to fasten his teeth on my ankle, and act I found (I think quite understandably) not only peculiar, but somewhat of a betrayal.

His so-called handicap never seemed to interfere with his love life.  He had several lady friends in the neighborhood he periodically took out for a night on the town, but he remained fairly loyal to Duchess, a brown and white Springer Spaniel who lived next door to us.

Duchess, being rather aggressive and somewhat ahead of herself in the pre-feminist 1950’s, would brazenly approach our front porch each evening at 8:00 and tap at the screen with her nose until we let Rocky out to join her.  It never occurred  to anyone to have her fixed or keep the two separated.  Just like most everything else in those days, the world was a looser, less rigid and structured place.  Even for dogs.  I stopped counting after the 21^st offspring.

I suppose there was nothing particularly remarkable about Rocky.  He never rescued orphans from a burning building; never chewed through the ropes of a kidnap victim; never pulled a drowning person to shore.  Eventually I taught him to sit, lie down and roll over when there seemed a legitimate need for it (when I bribed him with treats), but he never could seem to get the hang of heeling.

What he did shine in was responding to the commands of stretch and yawn, shake (a must after one of our monthly treks to the shower) and most important, the sound of the cookie drawer—his particular strong point:  We had two identical drawers in the kitchen, one for bread and one for sweets.  To the human ear, pulling out those drawers created what seemed to be the identical sliding or scraping sound, like a shovel being dragged across a sand beach.

If he was in the living room fast asleep in front of the fire and that bread drawer was opened, there would be no response.  On the other hand, if I were to sneak in and ever so quietly attempt to get at one of his beloved Oreos, his eyes would open, his ears leap to attention like a West Pointer on review, his three legs practically moving even before he had even fully stood.  Only later, when he became deaf, did the cookie drawer elude him.

Then there was the great fence war which raged for nearly a decade between my father and him.  Rocky, who hated nothing so much as to left alone on the patio (he had nothing but contempt for the redwood doghouse we had built him, preferring, with transparent obstinacy, to fake sleep under the rosebushes), early on figured out how to unlock the gate by flipping up the brass latch with his nose.  And if that didn’t work he would support himself with that one good leg and patiently gnaw through the pickets.

Over the years, he must have chalked up more escape attempts than John Dillinger.  At first this angered my father, but in time, I think he actually enjoyed coming up with ways to curtail Rocky’s escape plans.  Finally, a plate of aluminum wrapped around the catch put a stop to his breakouts.

Boyhood days eventually ended.  We spent less time together in the hills or in the creek.  We didn’t wrestle out in the back yard so often.  At his best, he’d been quite good at impersonating everything from Krypto, Superman’s dog, to bears when I was playing Davy Crockett, or lions when I was in a Tarzan mood—but the days were soon over when he’d sprint after me as I bicycled around town.

We did continue with our traditional Sunday walks to the old high school where a certain Mr. Jasper would be out on the track field chipping golf balls.  Mr. Jasper wasn’t all that crazy about me or any kid, but he was rather fond of Rocky, who would retrieve his golf balls, being careful not to mar them with excessive tooth pressure.  Mr. Jasper always had a cookie for Rocky and one for me too.  I think he would have preferred giving both to Rocky but his wife, a broad-shouldered, Amazonian type, insisted.

“A fine boy,” he would say, petting him before we left for home.  He never meant me.

We went through a lot, alright; the Cold War, the Kennedy assassinations, most of the Viet Nam War, race riots and Watergate.  He watched me moon over my first real love, flunk algebra and buy my first jockstrap.  He saw me the first time I was drunk.  He was my only friend and confidant when my parents were having marital troubles and I was sure they were going to divorce.  On those awful nights as they battled from their bedroom, he and I would silently leave the house, sneak down to a nearby creek bank and try to figure things out.  My parents ultimately healed their difficulties and saved the marriage, but I don’t know what I would have done without my dog on those lonely, confusing evenings.  That dark creek would have been a far more intimidating place without him to talk to and hold.

I never really noticed him aging.  It was almost as if one day he was full of life, chasing rabbits, having families, and attacking his number 1 enemy, the lawn sprinkler—and the next day he was laconic, sleeping most of the time, grouchy and out of sorts.  Then his hearing went.  Next his sense of smell.  Then they discovered a cataract in one eye and sometimes he didn’t even seem to recognize me.  I would carefully carry him to bed like a baby.  His teeth gave him problems and I mashed up his food extra fine.  Especially his Oreos.

Eventually, I went off to college and only saw him a couple time a year.  He lacked the old bounce to give me the enthusiastic welcome I craved, but after dinner he would slowly limp to my side and with considerable difficulty, crawl up on my lap and quickly nod off.  The old times, I told myself.  He still remembered.

I wasn’t there when he died.  I’ve never really forgiven myself for that.  He became so debilitated that it was mutually decided he had to be put to sleep.  I tried to convince myself it was the humane thing to do, but what I really wanted to do was kill the vet who was going to murder my dog.  Only a second ago he had been a puppy and I a small boy.  It just didn’t seem possible.

I was going back to school on a Sunday and had to catch a bus.  I put it off as long as I could, then went to say goodbye.  He was sleeping in a corner by the washing machine, a place he was particularly drawn to because of the warm air currents.  I knelt down, ran my hands through that familiar spotted fur, hugged him for several minutes then broke down as I hadn’t since I was a small boy.  I choked on my words as I tried to tell him something, I don’t remember what.  He licked my neck and his tail moved a couple of times like a weary metronome.

I never saw him again.

I still miss him.  Probably always will.  If there is really only one true love in life, the same can probably be said of a person’s dog.  I’ve had others since, but good as they were, they were all just substitutes.  No dog to equal him ever came along and after a while, I gave up thinking one would.  In that, nothing has changed.

GHP Home