Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
My son called me early in the morning and told me that something was wrong with Rockwell. At 15 he was our oldest dog and my son had retired him from duty and let him move in with him in the cottage. Every morning the two of them would come out together to do chores and after that Rockwell would be allowed in the big house to lie in front of the window walls in the warm sunshine and either doze away the day or keep an eye out for visitors. He’d always been the most aggressive of all the dogs defending our home as if he’d been paid for his service.
Over the years he’d taken quite a few beatings for it. Once he was torn to pieces by coyotes, killing two of them in the fight, yet he’d survived a touch and go recovery that stunned our vet and earned him a reputation with the coyotes who have never bothered us since. In his old age he’d mellowed a great deal, but every couple of weeks he’d still get into it with the older male Border Collie over some canine injustice we could never seem to sort out.
