ROCKY'S PAGE ~   In May of 2003 I read an announcement in the local paper about a bright orange friendly Chow at the Marathon Stand Up for Animals Shelter and I basically fell in love with his picture alone. I saw this intelligent face and just knew I was going to have to meet this guy. I kept hoping someone wouldn't adopt him before I could work it out to bring him home. Finally in July I was ready to give him a good home and went and got him. Rocky is now 8 years old and had out-lived his usefulness for the family that no longer wanted him. He had been left outside to do whatever and when he was dropped off at the shelter the previous owner wanted him put down. Luckily this shelter is a "no kill" shelter. When I brought him home he still had ticks on him and of course they had shaved off his coat so as to treat him better as it was all matted and dirty. As part of the adoption procedure, Rocky was tested for heartworms before I brought him home and lucky for us, he tested negative at this time. It only took me one week to get Rocky and Chance used to each other both being boys and all. At first I kept them separated with gates but Chance loves to go for walks and this is the way to his heart, so this is how Rocky and Chance became fast buddies. All I had to do was take them for walks at the same time and believe it or not they only growled at each other once then all the neat smells took over and they realized they made better friends than enemies. Now they are inseparable and I could never be so lucky. Rocky fits into ours lives as if he has always been here. He is extremely sweet and social. Everyone who meets him falls in love with him. He is a shaded red like Buddy was, just not as arrogant. It's funny how everyone thinks Chance is older than Rocky, but Chance is only 5 years old. I don't know if it is because of Chance's coloring, being a cinnamon and all the silver high lights he has around his muzzle, but they are really surprised to know that Rocky is the older Chow. He is just so playful and more outgoing than Chance. Anyway, life goes on and we fell into our routine of living and then I ran out of heartworm preventive pills and so took Rocky and Chance to the visiting vet on base and had them tested to get more medication when I couldn't believe I was being told that Rocky was heartworm positive. I became very upset because I believed Rocky was negative as his previous test implied and here he had been getting the medicine to prevent it, which in itself could cause an adverse reaction. I contacted the shelter and explained to them what I had found out. They blamed it on human error and after much to do the shelter gave me $100.00 towards his treatment. So in October 2003 Rock Star had to endure the treatment of having the heartworms killed. The vet informed me that he had had them for a while and would have shown positive had the test been done correctly. Luckily, there was no damage to his heart. After 8 weeks I had Rocky retested and he was absolutely NEGATIVE!!! Oh what glorious news!!! All I ever wanted to do was just give this special Chow Chow a great place to live out his days in comfort and happiness. Since it was now October, we enjoyed a little of the holiday and got all dressed up. What hams these two are!   Rocky enjoys just hanging out on the back porch. Here he is sitting on the top step.   He also likes to make sure all his toys are OUT of the toy box and scattered about the house. The harder I try to keep his toys put up the harder he tries to keep them out, and as you can see he usually wins. And after all that hard work it is now time for a nap!