Dog a man's best friend an animal that brings people together. My family had a dog that brought our family together. I remember when we picked him out, he was just the most adorable little puppy to ever seen. He came over and jumped right on me I just knew he was the one. We adopted him on the spot and named him Cody. We got another dog that day named sydney (that was quite bit younger than Cody) so the dogs could play. I always knew that Cody was the one though.
We brought Cody and Sydney home, Cody was an well behaved dog but sydney was a maniac. I always loved Sydney but Cody I secretly loved most, maybe it was the face, maybe it was he was so happy when I got home from school and I was so happy to see him every day. To train the dogs my dad came home every day and worked on getting them better behaved, Sydney was still the maniac she always was but still became well trained. Cody must have been one of those dogs that comes along every 100 years, he was cute, he was welled trained, but most of all he did exactly what you needed from a lick to a flop on the floor for a belly scratch he knew exactly what you wanted.
Cody saved my little sister's life when we were camping once at a corporate retreat for my dad’s work. While my sister was playing with her toys a bulldog rushed her, but the good old cody saved the day. He came crashing into the bulldog with full strength right into the neck. Cody wouldn’t let go he just hung on for dear life. My dad was quick to the rescue and pulled the bulldog away, earning a stake that night. At the end of the fight cody was bruised and battered, but without him I would be an only child.
We had to let Sydney go at one point, Sydney was a younger dog that had more energy than Cody couldn’t keep up with. Our friends wanted a dog so we gave Sydney to them but we still saw Sidney often.  While playing with Sydney Cody blew out his knee on a sprinkler and didn’t play as hard as you used to. It only got worse. Cody played to hard that he blew out 2 more knees. He was only 4 and it hurt him to walk, The vet could only temporarily help. They said his knees were in bad shape and that treatment would only help for about a year. Then he couldn’t walk.
Cody took it slow, he just wasn’t the same playful dog, but still a sweet one at that. He let my sister pull his ears and use him as a horse all because he loved us so much. I always knew a year would go by and he couldn’t walk, I just knew his life would be to short. We found out why his knees were so bad, and it was all because of a gene gone wrong. It ran on his mom's side of the family. Cody was a Yellow Lab and Labs have a tendency to have bad knees but Cody’s were worse than most labs.
A year went by and Cody started having trouble walking, than standing, soon it was he couldn’t move. We knew it was time to put him down because of all the pain he was in, but I couldn’t think of my life without Cody, he really was a man’s best friend. The vet said we had to put him down for his own good. We just sat for hours petting him at the vet, saying good bye. We decided to put Cody down, it was the hardest decision I ever made, but it was for his own good.
Through all those surgeries, all those checkups, I always saw Cody come back out with that happy grin on face just to be alive. This time he didn’t come out, all that came out was my dad with red puffy eyes, and no Cody.
I stayed upstairs the whole next day, I didn’t go to school I just sat in bed sad as could be. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I just lay there the whole day. The only way I got through it was knowing he got hurt doing what he loved and that was playing with his family. Cody had a good life a short 5 year life but a good one. That is what let me move on from the sadness of no Cody.
I still think of the choice I made to let him go, I know it was the right thing to do, but maybe just maybe could they have done something to help him. My life would be filled with joy if I just had 1 more minute with the Cody. If I could go back to when he was a puppy I wouldn’t do a single thing differently.