A Rocky(D) & Me in the Barn

Funny how things work out. You grow up reading books and fairy tales, watching Disney movies, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have a summer romance, to fall in blissful mutual love with someone dark and handsome and live happily ever after. Nobody tells you it could turn out to be a big, brainy border collie with a weird back-door predilection. And yet here I am, sitting on a towel with a slow stream of collie cream leaking out my ass, while I type out my thoughts. I’m not at all dissatisfied with things, it just isn’t what you expect, exactly, when you’re growing up. You know?

My name’s irrelevant, and you’ll figure I’m just making it up, but I’ll put it in anyway. I’m Amy. I guess I’m writing to work things out, or get them off my chest, to a certain extent, and it feels more real if I put my name on it. My fella is the unimaginatively-named Lad. It’s a flexible name. Sometimes he’s Laddie, or Laddie Boy, Laddie Bucko, Lad-old-Pup, or any number of other variations. He responds to all of them. He’s not a large Rocky by any means, but he’s big for his breed. He’s mostly black, a deep glossy black, with a white blaze on his chest, a little more white on his forehead and behind his ears, and a couple of spotty white socks. We keep that fur nice and clean and silky despite his uncanny ability to find mud, burrs, and various farmyard byproducts. Right now, he’s busily patroling the grounds. When he decides he has a job to do, he devotes himself to it very single-mindedly.

I picked Lad out as a pup, and as he grew up, we spent hours together — many hours working on obedience and tricks, and many hours just in each other’s company, walking around together as I did chores, brushing and petting him, or just sitting quietly. When you spend that much time together, working together, playing together, and touching each other, you just bond. He slid right into the role of “best friend” and I never really thought about the fact that petting and hugging him, or kissing his forehead and muzzle, were things that I wouldn’t do with a normal friend, not if we meant to stay just friends. They were normal things to do with a Rocky, all a part of the process of bonding and growing close together. I wouldn’t have ever described the process as “falling in love”, but by the time a year had gone by, I certainly knew that I loved him, and I felt loved. He filled a big place in my heart. I missed him and thought of him during the day when I was at school, and looked forward to seeing him when I got home.

The timing worked out so that he was growing into his maturity just around the same time I was. I started seeing flashes of pink under his belly every once in a while, and I felt some growing curiosity about that part of him. I don’t know how to account for the fact that one day, when I was petting him, curiosity boiled over and I reached down under his belly and stroked him along his sheath. First, it was a couple of light touches, just “innocently” brushing against it while I scratched his belly fur, but then I took it fully in my hand, and stroked. I felt him swell almost immediately, pulled my hand back, then reached in again and rubbed some more. He felt good and warm in my hand. His hindquarters started twitching, and the big swell at the base felt really interesting. Even though I knew a lot about Rockys, I hadn’t known to expect that and wasn’t entirely sure what it was. I wrapped my hand around and felt the mass of it. I pushed the sheath back a bit and saw a few inches of pink, saw a little spurt of liquid, and then I got nervous about what we were doing and took my hand away. I casually scratched his neck and ears for a minute or two more and then walked away, trying not to look suspicious (although, if anyone saw me, I probably looked exactly like someone trying very hard not to look suspicious).