Rocky, an Australian Cattle Dog

Update to the story . . . there was a standing room only crowd to meet Rocky at the gala celetration held at Dogma Bakery. The Washington Post was there to cover the story, and Rocky was such a good dog!

Rocky, we are all so glad you are home!

Today I get to do something different in posting a lost dog recovery story. Today I get to tell about a local lost dog search that I was involved with. He was recovered yesterday after five weeks on the lam.

He’s an Australian cattle dog named Rocky, and he was being cared for by a friend of his dad’s at a home in Falls Church; Rocky and his dad, Ravi, live in nearby Arlington. On a wee hours walk, a car horn spooked Rocky, and he took off like a shot.

Within hours, Ravi put up a blog devoted to getting help to finding Rocky – www.helpfindrocky.blogspot.com. He circulated the blog address and got fliers going immediately, and within days he had amassed a huge number of supporters. Actually, his supporters cheered him on from all over the country, and many, many people in the area would help flier, search, respond to sightings, set up feeding stations, and the like.

This went on week after week. A lot of us will admit that by the end of five weeks, we were discouraged, beaten down by the lack of success, and wanted desperately to see Rocky come home, yet it became more difficult to get out and pound the pavement. So many of us were at a loss to make sense of how Rocky just wasn’t showing himself, when we knew he had to be somewhere.

Yesterday, Ravi had hoped that volunteers would meet him at a designated place to flier, but only the most faithful showed. The rest of us were there in spirit, but not in person. Ravi's phone rang, and he didn’t fully let on to the other volunteer with him that this was the call we’d all waited for, but he must have known it. Ravi was gone in no time – just like his boy Rocky had been, five weeks earlier.

So it turns out that Rocky had made his way from Falls Church to Annandale, maybe five or six miles away. We weren’t fliering there, or pounding the Annandale pavement. I know for my part, I’ve heard stories time and again about how far away a dog turns out to be in the end, but it was never so real as it is now. It seems that he’d been hanging out in that final neighborhood for a week, not letting anyone contain him but accepting their generous offers of food.

Hopefully at the gala celebration in Rocky’s honor, scheduled for 2 days from now, I’ll get more details about what happened. But it sounds like a young girl was eventually able to get the number off Rocky’s collar, and her mother called. I guess the people didn’t contain Rocky, because when Ravi found the house and drove up, they pointed to the driveway of the house next door, where an exhausted Rocky was snoozing!!! I guess Rocky turned out to be one of those dogs that eventually just stopped running, and let someone help him.

Go now to visit Rocky’s blog, and read Ravi’s account. See the reunion pictures. Read the dozens of comments to see how happy people are about Rocky’s return. We can’t wait for the celebration scheduled for Wednesday. We’ll get to meet Rocky, and a lot of volunteers will get to meet each other for the first time, after many emails and phone calls back and forth trying to coordinate getting things done. The community that was built by the tragedy of Rocky going missing is a beautiful thing, and I’m very happy to be a part of it.

Update: here's the Washington Post article about the search and the celebratory gala. It's a great article!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/18/AR2009021800035.html?referrer=emailarticle

Here's another story from the Falls Church News-Press

Man Reunites With Man's Best Friend: Lost Dog 'Rocky' Ends 36-Day Adventure

Written by Natalie Bedell
Wednesday, 18 February 2009 16:47

The dog days of winter are over for one notorious, now celebrity Arlington pooch and his owner, Ravi Pimplaskar. Rocky, a 7-year-old Australian cattle dog, had been lost for 36 days when Pimplaskar received a phone call informing him that his four-legged friend was sound asleep on an Annandale family’s driveway. The dog had been lingering there for almost a week while the family regularly fed the visibly-thin stray.
Pimplaskar’s endless search efforts were made public through his regularly-updated “Help Find Rocky” blog, where he tracked sightings on a Google map, organized community search parties and even opened up emotionally about losing hope.

On Jan. 21, he wrote: “I still fill and clean his water bowl every couple days out of habit. I can’t believe that I haven’t seen my best friend in 18 days.”

Pimplaskar told the News-Press his friends expressed concern about his well-being during the time Rocky was AWOL.

“I certainly wasn’t taking care of myself,” he said.The pup’s face was plastered on lost dog posters throughout Falls Church and Arlington since he went missing on Saturday, Jan. 3 after being spooked enough by a car horn to wriggle out of his leash near the East Falls Church metro station. Becoming physically ill one evening after spending three hours in the pouring rain wandering the streets where his dog had last been seen at the time, Pimplaskar said he often struggled to eat or sleep during the month-long period of not knowing his furry companion’s location.

His bedroom had been where Rocky found comfort, and where Pimplaskar had found peace of mind by peeking in on the little guy. He slept on his couch during Rocky’s absence, not being able to bear glancing into an empty bedroom, though it’s this minor habit which now means the most.“It was crushing me to go past the bedroom [and not see Rocky]. It’s such a small thing, but now just to look into my bedroom and see him in there really affects me,” Pimplaskar said.

Perhaps it was knowing how clever and strong Rocky was that got him through the tough, pooch-less times. While living in San Jose, Calif., Pimplaskar said Rocky once managed to escape a dog crate, his bedroom and finally, the locked apartment he shared with his wife at the time. He’s even had to padlock his fridge since Rocky’s affinity for cheese and deli meat would often end in an explosion of scattered wrappers and half-eaten bologna on the kitchen floor to welcome his arrival back from work.

“Knowing how intelligent and perseverant he is, I knew if there were any dog that could survive out there it would be him. My friends teased ‘Rocky’s going to be fine. He’s probably acquired a car, bought a suit and is out on interview. Rocky’s just doing his own thing right now,’” Pimplaskar joked.

Apparently Rocky was done fulfilling his mid-life crisis, returned the red corvette, ditched the blond poodle half his age and is now safely at home — right where his master can see him fast asleep inside his usual bedroom campout, instead of on a stranger’s driveway.

As far as man reuniting with man’s best friend, Pimplaskar said, “It was probably the happiest moment of my life.”