This is the story of the best day of Rocky’s life.

When I adopted Rocky, I knew that I was adopting a special needs dog. He had diabetes and had spent five months recovering at Bradshaw Animal Shelter after being abandoned and nearly dying. When I read his story, I knew I wanted to bring him home. I am also an insulin dependent diabetic and I knew that I would be able to manage his diabetes and give him all of the treatos and snuggles a doggo deserves.

He ended up living with me for about two and a half years before he died from a very aggressive form of cancer. For most of that time, I knew that he had cancer and so I spoiled the shit out of him. 

There were lots of walks and snuggles and going for a drive around the parking lot in my apartment complex just because he loved being in the car so much. We went on day trips and road trips and watched movies and I would give him hugs and sing him songs and he loved every minute of it. But, without a doubt, the best day of Rocky’s life was the day he found the hot dog.

It was the middle of the day and I just had a few minutes to take the dogs out for a quick pee break. As we were walking down the sidewalk along a large patch of thick ivy, Rocky’s sniffer picked up something interesting and before I could stop him, he dove into the ivy.

His head disappeared beneath the top of the ivy and when he jumped back out, in his mouth was a fully cooked, barbecued hot dog. In the brief moment of time before he swallowed it (which happened so fast that even though I dove for the hot dog to grab it out of his mouth, it was gone before I could get to him), I saw the grill marks.

While I spent time worrying that my dog had just eaten something that some malicious person had intentionally planted in the ivy (I mean, why on Earth would there be a fully cooked hot dog in the ivy by the sidewalk), he perked up and we went home with a little bounce in his doggy step.

The look on his face was pure joy. You’ve never seen such a happy dog as Rocky was when he found that hot dog. 

For the rest of the time that I had him, every time we walked by that spot he got to sniffing the ivy in case there was another hot dog there, just waiting to be eaten by him.