Goodbye Cody :'(

Today was a very sad day. Today my dog Cody, one of the greatest dogs ever, died. I've been dreading this day for years now. We got Cody about 13 years ago, back in 1994. I adopted him, but he was really attached to my dad right away. After my dad died, my stepmom Diane took Cody to live with her in Maine. Cody was so close to my dad that having him around was like having part of my dad around too. My dad died almost 8 years ago and from the moment he died, we could say, "At least we've got Cody," whenever the now-familiar crushing sadness overtook our hearts. And from the moment my dad died I've been fearing this day.

The day Cody would be gone just like my dad.

Here's what made Cody so great:

1. He was brilliant. He knew so many tricks and commands, like all the normal ones of course, but also he knew the difference between "speak" and "sing". He would get the newspaper for us and was always so proud to do it. In fact, after he learned how to get the newspaper, he thought he could make us extra proud of him if he got EVERYBODY's newspaper on the whole street. So we'd open the door and there would be a pile of papers on the front porch and Cody would be standing over them just wagging his tail, showing off his newfound skill.


2. He had great word recognition and he could even spell! He loved cookies and my grandmother used to bake cookies just for him. He, of course, learned the word "cookie" very quickly and would go nuts whenever someone said it. So we had to start spelling the word "cookie" just so he wouldn't know what we were talking about. That led him to realize that "c-o-o-k-i-e" meant the same thing. He also learned the word "hamster"!


3. He had very strange obsessions. For example he had an intense dislike for UPS trucks. Mail trucks, Fedex trucks, dump trucks, and any other kind of truck were just fine with him, but not UPS trucks. He could spot one from a mile away, I think he even could tell by the sound in fact, and would start barking and carrying on, growling and letting that UPS truck know how he felt about it. He was also very obsessed with the word "shark" for some unknown reason. Whenever we would say "shark" he would go crazy, barking, whining, jumping in circles. We never did figure out why.

4. Cody could play basketball like a pro. He was even better at soccer. When my dad and I would play basketball, Cody would come out and take us on.

5. He knew how to be a good friend. His best friend was his brother Tucker. He was very loyal, like most dogs, to the people he loved. I remember one day when I was 16, my dad, Cody, and I went outside at night to go to the mall. It was dark and on the way to the car, Cody froze, staring in to the darkness with his fur standing up, growling viciously. He was not ever known to do that, since he was a very friendly dog (except to UPS trucks), and we looked around but didn't see anything. Suddenly this creepy guy started walking up our driveway and asked to use our phone. Cody was having none of it. I'd never seen a dog do that before in real life and it was the first time I realized that Cody would have died to protect us.

6. He could jump high enough to clear an invisible fence. When he was a puppy, my sister wanted to train him to be in agility dog shows, so she started working with him on his jumping. He became a very high jumper, which he used to his advantage to escape the invisible fence in our yard. He figured out that if he started at the other end of the yard and sprinted toward the edge as fast as he could, he could leap over the fence and he would be too high for the shock to affect him. I told you he was brilliant.

7. He always had a bone to chew on. He was very protective of his bones.

7. He crossed his legs when he would lay down.

It feels dumb trying to explain the significance of Cody in a numbered list. It feels just like all the pain of losing my dad all over again. Stupid sin. Stupid earth. I hate this place where death has to tear us apart from the people and the animals that we love. I can't wait to be in heaven where I'll be able to see my dad and Cody again and they can never be taken away. At least Cody and my dad can be together again.

This morning, on Cody's last morning on Earth, guess what he did. He went to get the newspaper.
Goodbye, good Cody Bear. See you soon.