We were almost 700 miles from home when Rocko found us. Seven hours of the ride was from the bottom to the top of Alabama followed by quick passes through Tennessee and Kentucky. Thanksgiving vacation was over, it was time to hit the road.
Rocko had no problem jumping in the car as long as he was with us. His people-brother sat in the back with him but he didn’t mind the ride at all. What he minded was stopping.
Time to go out
He was housebroken, we knew that from the short time we had been together. When he needed to stop along the road, he jumped off the seat and stood by the door. He still stands in front of the door when he wants to go out.
Sounds easy enough – just pull off the next exit and stop by the side of the road – except Rocko was terrified of the sound of cars. We would stop and open the door and he would refuse to get out. A couple more miles away from the expressway we’d try again. Finally when he couldn’t hear any traffic at all he would get out. By then we were in the middle of nowhere – in that pre-GPS time we joked about not being able to find our way back to the expressway. But we did and a couple hours later we would repeat the process until finally . . .
Home at last. That’s where we’ll pick up our next installment.