ROCKY IN BONE HEAVEN

For years and years once a month, myself, Rocky and a few good friends would frequent a steak house that was one of our favorite places to eat.  It was an ole barn style building.  Driving up we could see the smoke rising as they cooked the steaks on a barbeque pit style kitchen with mesquite wood.  Then as you get close, the smell of mesquite cooked steaks was everywhere in the air.  It was country style dining on benches with the menu written on a paper bag.  At that time there was the cowgirl steak, the cowboy steak, ranch style beans and a salad or better known on the menu as, buttons and boughs.  That was it.  And on every inch of the walls and ceilings were ties hanging from the people who wore the tires.  The waitresses would cut them off if you wore one in the place.  Each waitress had a country name, (not really theirs), and each eating area had its own name like Coyote Flats, Gold Nugget or Bighorn Gulch.  The names of the tables and the order that was ready was announced on a speaker so it sounded just like someplace back in time around the gold rush days. The paper bags that the menu was on had a plastic bag in it for leftovers or bones and I always asked the waitress if she had any more bones for my dog and they would always bring me a small box of bones, so Rocky was loving it when we came here.

I would always leave Rocky out front where there was a small grassy area and some old western antiques and he would lay there until I came out.  He would always be anxiously waiting for some bones.  Rocky was by now fully filled out to about 110 pounds with a beautiful fur coat.  He was such a handsome looking dog that I had been asked by a few people if I would be interested in studding him out for pups  I would say that I am sure he would like that but he is shooting blanks.  So he was such a good looking dog that someone would love to take him home with them but not even a bag of good country style steak bones could break his loyalty to me so I never had to worry.  This one particular night when we were done and coming out the door of the steak house I had to laugh when I saw Rocky lying in the middle of a large stack of steak bones just as happy as any dog could be.  Seemed as though quite a few people had a soft spot for Rocky as they passed by and pitched him a bone or 2.  He was definitely in bone heaven.