Last night, I decided to go up first and get ready for bed, while Peter took the responsibility of walking Rocky AND making sure the doors were locked. I could hear them downstairs, doing their thing while I was reading upstairs. I know when I hear the toilet flush that Rocky has had his poop and we’re set for the night.

The next thing I hear is Rocky padding quietly upstairs. He makes his way into our room and stops in the doorway to scans the room to see who is here. When he spots me in bed, he makes a run for my side of the bed and jumps his front feet up onto my chest and licks my face. It is most endearing. Then he stops and listens for Peter (Peter has said he stops and listens for me, when I am the one still downstairs). He will stay with his front feet up on the bed and roll his head, loll is a better word. But all the time he is listening.

This time, Peter didn’t call him down but came upstairs himself. As soon as he walked around to my side of the bed, Rocky went limp like a noodle and fell on the floor so that he couldn’t be picked up. We have been talking about when would be the appropriate time to let Rocky loose in the house overnight and now seemed to be a good time. It was the weekend, so no worries about being kept up all night and having to go to work in the morning. I asked if Peter had made SURE the door was locked and he had. So we left Rocky where he was lying and turned out the lights.

We all held our breath. Rocky probably thought we forgot to put him in his crate so he stayed as still as a child who doesn’t want his mother to notice what he has done. We didn’t know what to expect. We all fell asleep and once or twice in the night, I woke up to hear Rocky turning over in his sleep but he was still in the exact spot we’d left him, on the floor beside my side of the bed, jammed up against the bedside table. I finally had to get up to pee at about 5 and Rocky came with me, licking my knees and feet. But when I went back to bed, he lay down again in the same spot and we all went back to sleep. “Amazing” is something like the Grand Canyon, so this wasn’t amazing. But for now, we have reached the next milestone in this first year with Rocky.