It's been extremely difficult for us to get through the day knowing that he's not with us anymore. There's just too many memories everywhere and because we took him everywhere, there's a sprinkle of him everywhere we look or go. I'm hoping that writing about him today will help the healing process.
It all started when we decided to look at possibly getting a puppy. We looked in the paper, internet, etc. and thought the best dog for us would be a lab. We came across on ad on the internet for lab/shepherd mixes that we thought were absolutely adorable and decided to call about them. When we called, the gentleman said we only have 2 left (both females and we wanted a male), however, I'm on my way back with a litter of lab/boxer mix puppies from Warren, Ohio. We decided to drive out to Rochester, NY that night, which was about an hour away to look at the brand new pups that will have just arrived to see if we were interested. I went knowing that we weren't going to pick one out that night, but Chris went in knowing that we will be driving home with one that night (I guess you could say we had different expectations LOL). Anyway, we go and it's this black guy in a very shady neighborhood where the pups are held in a closed down warehouse...it was pretty sketchy looking, but we drove all that way so we might as well go in.
We walk in and it was actually pretty darn clean and the pups were very well maintained. He had built these cages out of plexiglass with plastic plumbing tubes to reinforce the corners. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with how well this guy was taking care of these pups. We started looking at all of them, and the guy started telling us about the story of how he got these pups that were 1/2 lab 1/2 boxer. The story goes: The original owners had a female lab and a male boxer that were show dogs, and they didn't realize their dogs had gotten together and needless to say, the owners didn't want anything to do with these pups because of the status of their 2 adult dogs.
Okay so now flash forward a little bit, Chris is looking at a dog that he liked, a very beautiful brown lab/boxer and I was looking at a yellow lab/boxer. Chris said mine was sickly looking and definitely didn't want that one and asked me to look at the one he was liking, so I go and bend down to pick up this brown pup and out of nowhere, this yellow adorable lab/boxer came running from the other side and jumped right into my arms so I picked him up and told Chris what just happened.
I put this pup on the ground and we already had a name picked out, (Chris' long time need of wanting to call his first pup) "Dakota". So I called out "Dakota come here" and what do you know...he came :) So it was a done deal, we brought little Dakota home that night and as you can imagine he was exhausted from all the car travels he's been on that day. We stopped into Wal-mart at Midnight, because that was the only store open that late at night, and picked up a cage, bed, bowls, etc. to get us through the night. Dakota was approximately 7 weeks old at that point.
The next morning, Chris and I thought we got a dud of a dog, all he did was sleep all day. We took him outside to get some fresh air and all he did was try to find some shade so he could sleep, which happened to be under the water meter HAHAHA. The name Dakota only stuck for a couple of days, then we decided it was too long and shortened it to Cody, which seems to fit him better any way.
Cody turned out to be such a wonderful dog! If you wanted to go outdoors and hike, bike, etc., he would wag his tail and couldn't wait to go on the adventure. If you wanted to just relax and watch a movie, he would just relax. There was never once a time that he wanted to do something that we didn't want to do...he would just go with the flow and was excited just being apart of our family.
Some great memories over the years:
When Cody was only about 10-12 weeks old, we took him to Letchworth State Park and hiked. He kept up with us even with his little legs. I remember specifically, we were climbing up these stairs that were really steep after looking at some beautiful waterfalls and he would just jump, grab on, and get up them as well as he could. Chris and I were so impressed with him.
We use to base our vacation trips around Cody...making sure that where ever we go, Cody could go too.
We bought a guide book of dog friendly places and one weekend decided to just drive south and see where we ended up...we ended up driving so far south that we decided to just go to NYC. We took Cody to 2 different dog parks in Manhattan...he had such a blast and so did we.
We took him camping to a very dog friendly place called Daggett Lake, where they had a specific part of the lake just for dogs to go swimming and a very nice hiking trail that was pretty steep that had a beautiful view at the top of the mountain. Cody loved hiking and swimming but absolutely hated the camping part of it LOL. We had a 2 bedroom tent so we set Cody up on one side of the tent and we had the other side, well, Cody had a different plan...he slept in between us under the covers every night. He hated camping and staying at the tent site, but LOVED the adventure part of it. He hated it so much that he would bark at a leaf blowing by our campsite and I had to hand feed him because he wouldn't eat otherwise....YES, I was crazy and loved my dog very much that I was willing to hand feed him so he wouldn't starve :)
Another trip, we took him up to Lake Placid and we would just walk the boardwalk and find pet friendly restaurants to eat at.
For one of the 4th of July weekends, We decided to go cabin camping because Chris decided that he hates tent camping so we found a nice cabin in West Virginia. Cody and Chris loved it!! We had such a great time hiking and exploring the area. We even had an opportunity to go to Washington DC to see the fireworks. I remember driving to DC on an extremely hot hot day and we get there, park. and find out that dogs are not allowed on the monument steps...as you could imagine we were extremely frustrated and disappointed after driving all that way. Well on the way back to our car, a HUGE down pour came down on the city...it was like a monsoon came through DC...it was crazy! People were trying to find shelter, Cody was scared to death. We finally found this tent that was up and huddled around Cody and each other until it passed. As soon as it did, we tried going back to the monument steps since there was just chaos at that point, and was actually able to get through security with Cody in tow....needless to say, he was the ONLY dog on the property seeing the fireworks on the monument steps...it was AWESOME! We loved it and he did too.
Some of Cody's favorite spots locally:
In the Winter time, Chris would take Cody to Oneida lake when the lake freezes over and just let Cody run and have fun on the ice...Oneida is only about 5 minutes from our house.
We would also take him hiking at various parks - Highland Forest being one of them and he absolutely LOVED going up to Fair Haven to go swimming on Lake Ontario and of course stopping to eat at Rudy's...one of our favorite places to take Cody in the Summer since we just eat outside on picnic tables with him. He use to get so excited when we would say "Do you want to go to Rudy's" he would start to get so excited to go in the car and as soon as we get close to Rudy's he would start whining to get out because he knew where we were :)
Oh there's so many memories that it would take a book to fill everything and all of his experiences. We just love him so much and can not believe how fast his life was shortened.
For those that don't already know: Cody was literally a happy 6 year old dog one day and the next day, he was like a senior citizen ready for his death bed...it was very strange and scary! Within an hour after his follow-up appointment that was scheduled for Thursday morning, he turned for the worse...he didn't eat or drink anything, his eyes were fully dilated and non responsive, and he was acting very strange with his back legs giving out. When we took him in to get checked out by the vet again, she was extremely shocked at how different Cody looked from the morning checkup and that moment. She ran a few more tests just to find out all was negative...we even got an x-ray and that came out clean. We knew at that point, it was something neurological going on with Cody and he needed help now. The only options left were, bring Cody to Cornell University for $3000-5000 just for an MRI and for a neurologist to review then if they find something and it's curable we would look at a total investment of about $10,000-15,000 at the low end and from what the doc said, Cody would not be the same dog as we know him. His quality of life will be downgraded. We decided to leave Cody at the vets office until the end of the day, which was only an hour and 1/2 later for them to just observe him. When Chris went to pick Cody up, the doc told him that Cody had a seizure while he was there and he is really suffering so needless to say, Leah and I rushed over there and realized that today was the day as the last thing we wanted for our Cody was for him to suffer and the doc even told us that she's not sure he can even see at that point as his eyes are non responsive to light or anything. Well, they brought Codster into the room where Leah, Chris, and I waited and as soon as I saw him, I knew he was gone. It was like his body was moving, but our Cody wasn't there. Leah said her goodbyes and gave him a great big hug and left the room with a technician, while Chris and I spent some time with Codster before we had to do the unthinkable. This was the hardest thing Chris and I have gone through. Anyway, when we were ready the doc came in and basically explained that if it is a neurological problem...he will act a certain way when she gives him the shot..needless to say...she was right! It was really hard for me to leave him that day knowing that we were going home to an empty house with all of his stuff there and no Cody. I guess the good news is that we know we gave Cody a great 6 years and he gave us the same. We love him so much and he'll never ever be forgotten.
Rest in Peace Codster! We all miss and love you very much!!
