Since the days when that crazy cocker spaniel Taffy knocked me off my feet at age 4, I’ve loved dogs.

I’ve had 14 of them. Not all at once; that would be nuts.

Time waits for no dog, and as they’ve passed from my life, my love for each has merged. They all still exist, jumbled together in the same regions of my head and heart.

Atop that big stash of emotions is Rooster.

He’s a rescue, and since we first saw him at the shelter on an Annapolis winter’s day in 2011, he’s been family.

Not the dog I ever imagined I wanted. A white ball of fluff, he’s the product of an elderly woman’s home so overrun by dogs that, when she finally asked for help, it surprised even the rescuers.

Rooster was the final one recovered by the SPCA of Anne Arundel County, pulled from under a bed after dozens of other puppies and dogs were taken away. He was given a birthday, Valentine’s Day, and put up for adoption.

That’s when he came into our lives, my wife and our two children. Bruised from the death of three dogs in quick succession, I wasn’t sure any of us was ready to go through that again.

The sight of him, small and frightened, convinced us all it was right to start anew. Soon, endless zoomies around the house, finished with Superman leaps beneath couches and chairs, nudged our pain to the background.

A Bichon Shih Tzu mix — shihtzchon in my over-repeated explanation — he was smaller than any dog in my life. And bigger.

He’d run for a swim in the bay at the end of our street or writhe with ecstasy as he scratched his back in any half patch of mud or grass. If there was mulch to spread in the flower beds, he was there to help.

For years, he would leap to catch my son arcing high above him on the long, chain tree swing in our backyard. He would peek out from blankets on the couch, cuddling with my daughter.

There was the inexplicable feud with a Saint Bernard around the corner and his endlessly, hopelessly optimistic pursuit of squirrel armies occupying his neighborhood. From his perch at our back windows, he barked out warnings of threats to the bird feeders — “FOX!” “CAT!” “FOX!”

Garbage trucks and school buses were his nemeses, and the metallic rattle of a passing workman’s truck loaded with ladders was a warning to grip his leash tight before he could teach that nuisance a lesson.

If you’ve ever had a dog, you know how good it feels to have one enraptured by the everyday sight of you walking through the door. Oh, he danced so many weary evenings, how much I’ve missed you!

Too many nights, after too many hours at work, walking him on a rain-slick street was a salvation. Rooster has been there at the heights of my happiness and the depths of my despair.

Time waits for no dog, though. Kids grow up and move out. One now has her own dog; the other, his cat.

Rooster remains.

When the pandemic shuttered the newsroom I’d known for decades, he parked himself under my desk. First, the makeshift one where I spilled a cup of tea on him, and now, on a mat in a corner of my home office.

I read him the idea I can’t quite catch, the sentence that just won’t jell. None moved him to speak, though he occasionally walked out to search for something more interesting.

Rooster is slower these days. Like me, I guess.

The squirrels don’t annoy him as they once did, and he’s content to stand in mostly silent vigil when foxes and cats cross his domain. He watches birds darting in the holly with something like affection.

My wife and I have taken some short trips recently, and our son agreed to take Rooster in while we were away. She got home while I was dropping him off and felt the house somehow less, subtracted.

Who knew 20 pounds was the weight that gives our home its heft?

Home with a bug after we returned, my wife awoke from an afternoon nap and realized Rooster wasn’t at the foot of the bed. She got up and called his name. No answer.

He wasn’t in the bedroom or the sitting room with its view of the backyard or in the big closet where he likes to sleep next to my shoes. She called again. No answer.

He’d gone downstairs, jumped to his favorite spot on the back of the couch so much like the color of his fur, and fallen asleep — deep, oblivious sleep.

When he finally awoke to her increasingly worried calls, he looked at her, confused.

What? Here I am.

I think Rooster might be my final dog.

It’s hard when they go, as they inevitably do. Just before Thanksgiving, we lost Lucky, a Corgi-Australian shepherd mix we adopted from friends who moved into assisted living after a stroke.

Thirteen have come and gone in my life, and just as the love for them merges, the partings mount up, grief that tempers the joy.

Time waits for no dog.

So, on Rooster’s 14th birthday, I wanted to thank him for being in our lives. Before it’s a lament.

Thank you, my little friend, for all you’ve given me.

Thank you for being our furry Valentine.