Saying Goodbye to My Dog

Saying goodbye to Cody was one the hardest things I have ever done. In 2013 I was just moving back to California after three years of moving around the country in the Marine Corps. I finally got stationed back home at Camp Pendleton and decided I wanted to get a dog. I searched the internet for dog breads and decided a husky would be a perfect fit for my active lifestyle. One day I stumbled upon a blurry picture of a husky on Craigslist and the owners were only 45 minutes away in El Cajon. The description said they were a military couple and they accidently moved into an apartment complex where they didn’t allow huskies. You know, the whole dog bread thing. So I decided to make the drive to El Cajon to see if this dog was a good fit for me. When I arrived, he was chasing a cat around the apartment when I first saw him and I immediately knew this was going to be my dog. He was perfect! I paid the owner $500 and off we went. On the drive home I decided on a new name for appollo, he was now Cody!

Unfortunately, after a few months with Cody I found out I was getting deployed to Afghanistan so I needed to find someone to take him in while I was gone. I really didn’t want to leave him for a long period of time but I didn’t have a choice. Luckily I found a great family that agreed to watch him while I was gone and they had two dogs and a yard for him to play in. When I returned from deployment I wasn’t sure how Cody was going to respond when I went to pick him up. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when he gave me the best welcome home response by jumping up on me and howling like a crazy person. He was so happy to see me and I was too.
For the next 10 years Cody and I were best friends. He came everywhere with me from long runs by the beach, to road trips to the mountains and around town where everyone new me by my dog. Cody was never that great with other dogs and although I would take him to the dog park on a regular basis I would always have to watch him so that he didn’t get into a scuffle with another dog, usually it was with larger breads. For the most part he was good but once in a while he would get irritated and decided to turn on the other dog and let him know. He also had this weird thing where he would get defensive when an older man, usually over 60 would approach him to pet him. I realized that he had been mistreated at some point in his first 5 years by an older man, I suspected he had been abused by a previous owner but I couldn’t pin point it because I knew he had been through a handful of owners before he came to his forever home with me. I guess this is kind of typical when you get a rescue dog.
Cody was a very loyal dog but he was never the cuddly dog that most people have. I had to earn his respect and his love and when we were around other people he would allow them to pet him but he never really liked a lot of attention. He was an interesting dog but he was mine.
In the last year of his life, he started to decline drastically. It all started with his back legs starting to go out on him. He seemed to be walking with a limp and when I took him to the Vet they told me he was starting to get arthritis in his back legs and that was very common for older dogs. From the previous paperwork I had on him from the pound where the previous owners found him, they said he was 5 years old, which would make him around 15 at this point. He had definitely lived a long life so it was not surprising things were starting to go down hill. I knew that Cody only had a short period of time to live so I decided to take him on a long road trip up the coast on an RV trip. We had so much fun together on this trip!

When we returned home after a couple months, Cody was having a hard time even standing up and he could no longer walk around for more than a minute or two without his back legs going out on him. He began to walk into corners and forget where he was. He would just stand there looking at the wall and I would have to get his attention so that he would come back to reality. When we were outside, he would end up trapped in the bushes or next to the shed where he didn’t seem to know where he was anymore. It was really hard to see but I knew this was just the signs of the end approaching. A couple months later, cody passed away at 16 years old.
I’m making this video 6 months later because it’s taken me some time to process everything. One thing I do know is that Cody had a great life and I am so thankful he came into my life when he did. I am forever grateful for the blessing of having him for the time I did. Aren’t dogs the best!

R.I.P. Cody the Husky

#huskylife #husky #siberianhusky