Casey and the Perfect Rock

Casey was a little black Labrador retriever mixed-breed puppy, with splashes of white her her neck and on her chest. What made her even more adorable was the ways she always carried her right ear straight up and her left ear folded over.

Casey had deep brown eyes that shined with love, intelligence and a simple joy of life.

One night, when she was just about eight weeks old, she was taken from her mother’s warmth and coldly dumped in a pen at the city dog pound. Abandoned and afraid, Casey cried most of the night and into the next day.

On the second day, a man named Same and his wife Kathy walked up to her stark cage. Sam scooped her up in his arms and laughed warmly.

It was love at first sight as Casey wriggled in his arms and covered his face with puppy kisses. “You are coming home with us, little lady,” Sam told her. Off they went in the family car, leaving that scary pound behind forever.

Now Casey was so round and small that the blades of grass tickled her tummy when she got to her new home..

Sam used to say that she must have been part greyhound because Casey loved to run. She grew from a round puppy into a sleek dog, weighing more than fifty pounds, with long legs. She adored running as fast as she could, sometimes in big circles. You could even hear her paws beating on the ground like drums. Sam laughed heartily and called her Black Thunder when she did.

One of her favorite games was when Sam threw a Frisbee way in front of them and Casey would run like a rocket to catch it before it hit the ground. She would then run it back to him to throw again and again and again.

When they lived in Florida, Casey would always have to be on a leash. Casey didn't like it much because she couldn't run free.

Sam and Kathy would sometimes take her to the beach and try to coax her into the water but Casey wanted no part of it. She didn't seem to like the water at all, particularly those scary waves.

Casey was always right there with Sam. Every place that he would go, she would be right next to him, just like his own shadow. She loved it when he drove the car because she would either be sitting proudly in the front next to him or in the back seat if Kathy rode in front.

Sam had gone through heart surgery just before they got Casey. “People say I saved Casey’s life by taking her away from that awful pound,” Sam said to Kathy one day. “But I think that she was sent by the angels to rescue me.

Sam and Kathy moved from Florida to the woods in the mountains of northeast Georgia. Casey loved it because she could be off the leash a lot more. She had fun chasing rascally rabbits, although she never caught them.

Behind their cabin, they had a stream, which made wonderful sounds as the water rippled and gurgled by. In it was a huge, flat rock on which Sam and Kathy would place their chairs, particularly during the summer months.

At first, Casey sat on the bank, afraid to get in the water. She would whimper, whine and bark until they finally convinced her to join them on the big rock.

Casey nervously moved toward the edge of the rock and carefully put one paw in the whispering water. It wasn't bad at all, even kind of fun. She liked the feeling when the water whirled around her paw. She put in another paw and then leaped fully into it, snapping at the ripples as she ran through it. It was great FUN!

From that day, Casey could just never quite get enough of the stream. She loved running and splashing in it. Under the water’s surface was a layer of rocks – all sorts of rocks. There were little flat ones and bigger round ones.

Children sometimes would come to play in the stream and they would pick up stones and throw them for Casey to chase. The happy black dog would splash after them and put her nose underwater where the stones had disappeared, sometimes blowing bubbles through her nose.

Other times, Casey would just paw the rocks underwater and then reach down to snatch them with her strong jaws and proudly carry them up the bank of the stream. Some were larger than softballs and she would make happy sounds as she pushed them with her nose along in the dirt or swatted at them with her paws. Casey was never happier than when she was dragging rocks out of the stream.

Sam used to sit in his chair on the big flat rock, watching her and laugh. “I think she is on a treasure hunt for the perfect rock,” he would say. “I guess she is the only one who will be able to recognize it.”