Cody

[This blog was begun on April 9, 2017, and finished on April 26, 2017.]

Cody died yesterday, April 8, 2017, at 10:30 in the morning, as I was stroking his head gently and telling him that I loved him.  He had been in increasing agony for three days from spinal stenosis, after dealing with it for probably the last two years.  Slowly the nerves in his lower back were sufficiently blocked for him to lose all use of his back legs.  Suzanne slept next to him the last three nights as he lay on the floor next to the sofa.  On his final night, he could not even sit up, and he was not able to squat adequately to pee.  He must have been very confused and embarrassed (yes, dogs do get embarrassed), but we soothed and reassured him.  Friday night we played our last brief game of tug rope, modified by his condition, complete with his playful growl and eagerness.  The front half of him could have lived for years, but the back half was done after all the hundreds of miles he had run.

I am writing this blog for one primary reason--so that Suzanne and I may remember him as well as we can.  I did not write down much after Casey died in 2005, and so I have only vague memories of the small details about him.  With Cody, I want to write down as much as I can.  We have several videos and thousands of photos from the last eleven years, but they aren't enough.  I need to be able to read the words and recall him as fully as possible.

I know this account will be too much for most people to read, but it's my tribute to him.  It's what we most need to move on.

Cody's Early Days

We began looking for a new puppy about five months after Casey died in March, 2005.  We knew we wanted a very light-colored American Labrador retriever, and we wanted to train the dog from the very beginning.  We visited four breeders but were disappointed each time, because we were unable to see and check out each puppy's parents.  We found a breeder in Tulare that looked good in comparison with the inexperienced breeders we'd previously checked out, and we were able to meet Cody's parents.  His mother was a very small Labrador named Brandy.  She weighed less than 50 pounds and looked like a doe.  His father was a tall, skittish Labrador named Winchester that weighed 90 pounds.  Both dogs were quite beautiful.  [Only recently we have discovered that the breeder we chose is now considered a "puppy mill" breeder.  We saw no evidence of that in 2005, or we would have backed away.  We thought his place was the cleanest and most organized, and maybe it was then.]

We bought Cody, and he was given his first bath.  I dried him off and held him close to me, and he was so very soft and calm.  We placed him in an uncovered dog crate in the back seat of the car, and he rode quietly all the way home, about 250 miles away.  When we drove into Mountain View about 5:00 pm, we realized we didn't have any toys for him to play with, so we immediately drove to a pet shop to buy his first toys.

I have one loving memory of arriving home.  When we set him down in the kitchen, I grabbed a tennis ball and rolled it across the floor to the other side of the room, not expecting any response.  He ran after it so hard that he slid into the base of the kitchen cabinets.  He was barely able to get it into his mouth.  He brought it back to me and dropped it, ready for the next throw!  It was at that moment I understood what "retriever" meant, because it was really part of his chemistry.

In retrospect, the first couple of months probably went a lot better than I remember, because he was house-trained within a few weeks and growing quickly, but Suzanne reminds me that I initially wanted to take him back, because I was so impatient to have him learn and retain things.  He was a puppy who needed constant reinforcement, as all puppies do, and he finally taught me that.

Suzanne chose his middle name, Moonbeam, and that was how he was registered.  He was our little moonbeam.  We abided by the caution to not let him run up and down stairs for the first three or four months of his life, so we had to carry him, but that was just fine with us, because he weighed less than 25 pounds.  When it was time to let him run the stairs, it took me half an hour (really!) to coax him down one flight of stairs, one step at a time.  You can tell from the photo how intent he was to learn.  By the next day, he was absolutely flying up and down the stairs.

The real turning point in his puppyhood was when we entered him in puppy classes at Sirius Dog Training.  Not only did we go through two eight-week courses, but we had daily homework with him, assigned by the teacher.  I worked with him every evening for one to two hours, and Suzanne and I would work with him together on weekends.  We learned so much from the trainers at Sirius, and he was a star student.  His emergency phrase, to keep him from running into the street, was "aqui aqui" (Spanish for "here here"), and his emergency treat was a small bit of anchovy paste.  He learned instant recall at a very young age because of that anchovy paste!

I'll talk more about Cody's intelligence later in this article, but I will say that, once we started the puppy classes, he was easy to train.  Dogs are so food-oriented, so we'd place bits of his kibble in our pockets and capture his full attention when we took out a nugget.  He learned to heel (without a leash) on our local tennis court.  If he could heel for an entire loop of the court, he'd get a single piece of kibble.

Another vital part of his puppyhood was his social interaction with other dogs.  Sirius says that your dog should be exposed to 500 other dogs by the time it is 6 months old!  We took him to "puppy socials" that were sponsored by Sirius, and he got to play with other dogs his approximate size and age.  They'd play for ten minutes, and then we'd join them for five minutes of heeling or some other exercise led by the trainer.  It was great training for all of us.

Suzanne and I also took him to Fort Funston and Crissy Field in San Francisco to frolic with many other dogs in the open fields, dunes, and beaches.  We'd meet up with our good friends, Bob and Betsy, and their chocolate Lab, Mickey, for some great outings together.  Mickey and Cody would see each other and bump chests in full delight, and then they'd play together for a couple hours.  Here's a photo of them chasing a toy into San Francisco Bay one Sunday morning.

By the time Cody was 5 months old, he'd had an incredible growth spurt and was a very beautiful dog.  Here is a photo from December, 2005, at our Christmas party, with him wearing his first Christmas collar.  He was calm, attentive, almost stoic for a puppy around other people.  In this photo, he is less than 6 months old!

Cody Was So Handsome

When we got Cody, we asked for the lightest color dog in the litter, because Suzanne didn't want dark dog hair on our light carpeting, and we got a dog that was the lightest-colored Labrador I've ever seen.  Most of him was pure white.  We especially loved the caramel tips of his ears.  It was as if they'd been dipped in caramel sauce.  By the time he was 5 years old, his ears had turned mostly caramel in color, so we forget about those caramel tips.

When Cody began to grow out of his puppy awkwardness, I absolutely fell in love with him.  I still think he was the most beautiful dog I've ever seen, without any discernible birthmarks or flaws to his coat.  He was velvet-soft to the touch, especially those ears!  People who would pet him often looked at us and said, "He's so soft!"  Owners usually think their dogs are good looking, but hundreds of times we were stopped by strangers when we were walking Cody and told how handsome they thought he was.  We were very proud parents.  Even after Cody had turned 10 years old, his coat was smooth and silky, and he had few of the blemishes that you usually see with older dogs.  Casey had over twenty lipomas (fatty cysts) at the end of his life; Cody had two.

One of my favorite memories is from only a month or two before he died, when I was out alone with Cody at a cafe.  A young kid with earbuds and skateboard walked by with his friends, looked over at Cody and said, "Neat dog, mister!"  The comment took me by surprise, because I didn't think 12-year-olds noticed anything, much less expressed their thoughts so eloquently in front of their friends.  I said, "Thank you," as he passed by.

Another incredible aspect to his physical beauty was that he had no discernible doggie odor.  This was coupled with the fact that dirt quickly fell off him whenever he got dirty.  After his first-day puppy bath, he had three more baths the rest of his life!  Suzanne and I would often check him for any odor or sign of dirt, and there simply was none.  This was in stark contrast to Casey and most other Labs I've seen.  He could romp in the ocean and play on the muddy beech, and by the time he got back to the car, he was 90% clean.  He'd ride home on his mat, we'd wipe him off with a damp towel, wash his mat, and he was good to go.  He especially loved getting his mouth full of dirty sand; those were probably his happiest days.  Oddly, he didn't love the water.  He'd only dive in to chase a toy or stick.

Also unlike Casey, Cody had no skin diseases or irritations and no problems with his ears his entire life, nor did he ever fight weight problems.  He was always trim, for we exercised him and never fed him table scraps.  He was fed kibble, small dog biscuits, pieces of apple, and dollops of yogurt.  That's what kept him looking good his entire life.

Here is one of my favorite photos of Cody, when he was about six years old.

Cody Was So Intelligent

Labrador retrievers live to do things for their masters.  Cody would often gaze at us as if to say, "What's next!?"  This eagerness to learn made it so easy to teach new commands to Cody, and by the end of his life, he'd learned over 100 commands.  He often learned multiple words or phrases for the same command, such as "Paw" and "High Five" to elicit the raising of a paw, but he also knew sequenced commands, such as "Other Paw," if we wanted him to shift from one paw to the other (regardless of which paw he'd started with).

Cody learned all of the usual commands ("Sit," "Stay," "Down," "Come" or "Come Here," etc.), but he also learned a number of more complex commands.  He understood "Get In The Other Room" when I wanted him to not interact with me or a guest.  He'd run to the next room and lie down, looking at me.  As with Casey, I also taught Cody how to "Whisper."  That command should elicit a very soft, muted bark, but it's difficult to teach, because you have to demonstrate it to the dog.  When I taught Casey, it probably took us over 100 tries to get it right.  Cody got it on the third attempt.  Oddly, when he learned it originally, he was in a sitting position, so Cody always got in a sitting position thereafter when he performed a "Whisper."

When he was only a couple years old, he'd learned so many commands that I tried giving him more than one command at a time, just to see what he would do.  With the very first attempt, I said, "Cody, go downstairs and get your tug toy, bring it up, and then you'll get a biscuit."  Without hearing another word, he dashed down the stairs, looked around and found his toy in about 20 seconds, brought it upstairs, dropped it at my feet, ran back to the top of the stairs, and looked back over his shoulder, as if to say, "Okay, it's time for the biscuit."  His treats were downstairs in the kitchen.  He'd not only finished the first command, which took half a minute to complete, but he'd kept in mind the second command and felt that he had to remind me!  I was just amazed at him, as we headed down to get his biscuit.

We worked every day on teaching and reinforcing commands he knew, although there were frequent instances when we'd try a command he hadn't heard in months, and he'd usually still know it.  Cody's best command--one that he seemed to get correct 100% of the time--was "Off."  We used it if there was something we didn't want him to touch--anything.  It could be a piece of food we'd dropped, a new strip of grass, a person's shoes, a new dog--literally anything.  This allowed us to completely trust him and take him anywhere.  We could walk with him through Macy's without him stopping to sniff anything.  When we said, "Off," his reaction was immediate--another command was never necessary.

At a very early age, he learned to retrieve the newspaper in the morning, right after he would go out to pee on the wood-chip ground cover in our front yard.  He would glance at us, and if I said, "Get The Paper," he'd run over to the driveway, find the paper, somehow pick it up, and bring it all the way into the kitchen without further direction.  We feel it's vitally important to reward your pup with tiny (not large!) treats when he does things correctly, so he'd always get a small piece of kibble when he dropped the paper in our hands.  Suzanne reminds me that, when he was first learning to retrieve the newspaper, he enjoyed it so much that he wanted to retrieve the paper from neighbors' driveways also.  He obviously learned to retrieve before he learned to stay only on our property.

Cody was so keyed into what we would say that he often taught us that he'd learned something.  I find this especially amazing about our interaction with dogs.  They can learn words and phrases without intentionally being taught.  A long time ago I was told to try to avoid teaching a dog two words that had the same vowel sound, because they sounded too much alike, but I discovered that wasn't necessary with Cody.  I recall a stark example of his being able to discern between two words that sounded almost the same.

He would come into my office about fifteen minutes before noon each day, knowing that lunch and a walk were to happen soon, and one day when he was two or three years old, he taught me that he knew a new command.  He already knew the command "Food," meaning "it's time to eat."  On this day I didn't say anything as I walked down the hall and he dashed for the stairs.  As he took the first few stairs, I said, "Oh, I have to get my shoes."  He did a U-turn on the stairs, ran to the closet in the master bedroom, and sat down.  My shoes were just inside the closet, and I realized that he knew the word "Shoes."  From that day forward, he'd always stop at the top of the stairs and wait for one of two commands--"Food" or "Shoes."  If I said "Food," he'd fly down to the kitchen; with "Shoes" he'd go to the bedroom closet.  When we started keeping our shoes in the downstairs foyer, we no longer needed the "Shoes" command, but I tried the command a couple weeks before he died, and he still knew it and obeyed.

What other commands did Cody know?  "Who's here?" elicited a loud bark and look around the house (or area, if we were in a public place), for someone he knew.  He'd ignore the people he didn't know and only look for a person he recognized.  "Go see Suzanne downstairs (or upstairs)" instructed him to go visit Suzanne, while Suzanne would use a similar phrase ("Go find Steve") would tell him to locate me.  When he began taking a lot of medication during the last year of his life, he quickly learned "Pill Bombs" to signify that it was time for pills, which he loved, because we placed the pills within globs of his wet dog food.  Cody knew people's names and words for different foods, whenever we used them in our conversation.  His ears would perk up if we mentioned "green bean" or "apple," because those were special treats.

Very early in his training, Cody really learned "no" and "okay" very well.  It's amazing to me that dogs can learn words in a general way, to be applied to any number of situations or behaviors.  If he wasn't sure whether he should do something, like approach a stranger, a quick "okay" from me would communicate to him that he could approach, and he'd react instantly.  We discovered that he would listen for instruction, and then he'd follow it.  That trust really connected him with Suzanne and me.

If there was ever a situation we needed to control, such as moving him away from a guest who was uncertain around large dogs, we would say his name once and follow it with a command, such as, "Cody, come."  We practiced many of our commands with him frequently.  Observing his intelligence was a joy for 11-1/2 years.  I'll never see or have a dog who had such diverse, deep, social intelligence as Cody did.

Cody Was So Well-Behaved

Hand in hand with his intelligence was his incredibly good behavior.  Cody did not behave like most Labradors, and we were so fortunate that he had those good-behavior tendencies.  Three of his traits were most unusual, and they come to mind immediately.

First, Cody was not a chewer when he was a puppy, unlike Casey, who went through bags of candy, shoes, socks, books, bananas, bars of soap, vials of food coloring (red, blue and green poop for three weeks), rugs, and a variety of other things.  Cody chewed the corner off one paperback book, and that was about it.  We learned at Sirius Puppy Training that we should give him an old bath towel to chew, and Cody had an "upstairs" towel and a "downstairs" towel.  He'd carry a towel around with him everywhere and only chew on it, rather than touch other things.  (He also discovered that he could use a bath towel as a sled down a flight of stairs, holding one end in his mouth and sitting on the rest of the towel!  It looked terribly dangerous, but he loved it, as he'd bump down the stairs.)

As an adult, Cody's only bad behavior was that he loved to chew bits of paper--napkins, newspaper, or small scraps from the paper recycling basket.  He'd grab a piece of paper or a napkin about once a month and sit with it, only chewing it when he realized we hadn't noticed.  We almost never lost personal belongings from his chewing.  He did eat part of one flip-flop, one small handkerchief and a pair of bikini panties belonging to Suzanne's niece, but that was the extent of his desire for clothing.

One endearing habit he had was to grab a shoe, flip-flop, or slipper and lie down or sit with it.  He wouldn't chew it, although it could get pretty wet from his mouth.  This would happen when he felt he was being ignored or wasn't part of our attention.  I took the above photo one day after he had sat behind me in my office for about three minutes.  I was finishing something on my computer, and he just sat there and waited for me.  Cody was a dog of immense patience, unlike most Labs.

The second unusual, non-Lab behavior was that he never once jumped up on anyone.  I found this to be unbelievable.  I know he was capable of jumping, because he'd rise high to catch balls I'd throw to him, but never did he try to place his paws on a person or, for that matter, a countertop or piece of furniture that was off-limits.  When he greeted people at the front door, he'd bark and circle them once or twice, but he would never touch them.  Where did that come from?  Suzanne thinks the trait came from when he was a puppy and would try to paw at her calf.  She put on some high, rubber rain boots, and they cured him of that habit.  Still, I don't think that was why he never jumped on people.  I think it was because he naturally respected boundaries.

The third unusual trait was that Cody showed little interest in human food, unless it was offered to him and was told it was okay to eat.  This was another case of his respecting boundaries; we didn't bother him at his food bowl, and he never bothered us while we were eating.  Many times I would leave a full plate of food on a plate resting on a TV tray, only inches from his head, while I went to the kitchen for something, and he would glance at the food and then ignore it!  What dog does that?

We chose to never feed Cody scraps from the table, and we also asked our guests to not feed him, so he never begged for handouts.  It was innate to his behavior that he was not to touch human food unless given permission.  If we dropped a tiny piece of food on the kitchen floor while preparing a meal--and it was safe for him to eat, such as a leaf of lettuce or bit of apple--we used the command "Clean-up" to alert him to come into the kitchen and search for something on the floor.  If he heard the command, he could be anywhere in the house and would immediately rise to come to the kitchen.

We also felt it was important to keep his diet steady, with lots of little, healthy treats, but only a limited variety. I don't think he ever had a bite of meat or sweets in his life.  I think that lack of variety was a big part of his good behavior; he wasn't on the lookout for whatever he could eat next.

In addition to not being a chewer, not jumping up on people, and not being overly interested in human food, Cody was consistently polite with all people.  He would allow little kids to pet him endlessly, and he'd wait for permission to approach people he didn't know.  He made it so easy to be with him, because we weren't constantly trying to keep him from doing inappropriate things.  Many people commented about his good looks and his intelligence, but our favorite comments were when they told us how well-behaved he was, and many people said he was the best-behaved dog they'd ever seen.  We were very proud of him.

A Day With Cody, Moment By Moment

When I'd awake each morning, I'd exit the room and often find Cody waiting just outside my door, having arisen earlier with Suzanne to eat breakfast and bring in the paper.  In the last year or so, since his spine problems began, I found him downstairs on his futon sofa more often than not each morning, as if he didn't want to climb back up the stairs.  I always greeted him, gave him a loving pat, and went to the kitchen for breakfast, no matter where he was camping out.

Before Suzanne would leave for work in the morning, she'd play her "four treats on the floor" game with him, which taught him patience, focus, and resolve.  She'd place four kibble treats on the floor and tell him "Off."  He'd have to wait for 5-10 minutes (!) before he could touch them, and then he got them one at a time, as she pointed to each one.  He loved that game.  After it was over, he'd usually retire to his futon, Suzanne would leave for work, and I'd head for my office to work on something.  So, prior to mid-morning, I'd usually have little contact with him.

Before I retired, he often came to my office and lay down just behind me on the floor.  Unlike Casey, who insisted on lying next to my chair or on my feet during the day, Cody always observed boundaries between himself and others.  To lie behind me against the wall was close enough for him.  I'd swivel my chair and stroke his body often, and we both loved that.

After I retired and his spine problems began, he'd almost always stay on his futon until about 11:00 in the morning, and then he'd come into my office, sit down about five feet away and to my left, and wait for me to notice him.  Of course, I always noticed him right away, and I'd always get up from what I was doing, go over to him, and take his head in my hands.  Then I'd have him lie down so I could caress his right ear and scratch his lower back.  He'd let out continuous moans, whether from pleasure or pain or both, and that would go on for a couple of minutes.  He'd stretch and relax, I'd often kiss him, and then I'd tell him that he had to wait for lunch.  He'd usually stay there on the floor in the same position until my work was done.  When I slid the keyboard tray in, he would jump up from the floor and head for the door, because he knew it was lunchtime.  Alternatively, before sliding the tray in, I'd just say, "Okay," and that would also be his cue to rise up.

Our lunch routines were always the same in the last year of his life, when he began taking several medications for spine pain and digestive tract problems.  First I'd give him 1-1/2 pain pills in his "pill bomb"--pills wrapped in dog food.  Then I'd give him lunch, a combination of wet and dry low-fat dog food.  As I prepared the food in a bit of warm water, he'd get so excited that he'd start doing laps around the futon sofa while trying to talk to me in his way.  He actually sounded like he was trying to form words.  I'd set his dish down on the floor, and he'd run to it and start eating immediately.  That dog was always so excited to get his food.

While he ate, I prepared the pooper-scooper bag, put on my shoes, got my jacket, and met him at the front door.  He always waited patiently for me to put on his leash, and then we'd go for our walk around the green area in our complex--about half a mile.  I was careful to let this be his time--sniff as much as you like, Cody.  He'd usually poop, walk past the barking dogs in backyards, and take me on our route.  He knew the choices in our route perfectly, pausing at each intersection and looking at me to find out whether we should go to the left or the right.  We had several different routes, so each day could be different than the last.  After fifteen or twenty minutes, we'd stop at the corner mailbox for the mail and head home.  I often took off his leash at the corner, and he'd prance home on his own, turning ahead of me into our driveway.  I wasn't afraid to have him off-leash, even though there was the occasional car or other distraction, because he was very good at voice recall.  If I said, "Cody, come!" or "Cody, leash," he'd immediately turn and come back to me.  He never did otherwise.

We'd get back to the house, I'd eat lunch and watch "Charlie Rose" on TV, and he'd lie beside me on the floor while I ate.  When I had finished lunch, I'd usually go back to my office, and he'd get back on his futon for the afternoon nap.  Deliveries often came in the afternoon, so each time I heard the doorbell ring, I'd immediately hear his barks and know he was at the front door.

During the days before I retired, he'd usually spend his afternoons away from my office, but after his spine problems began, he would again visit my office mid-afternoon and sit down to stare at me.  Once again, I'd always rise and go over to him.  I felt it was important to never ignore him!  He would often squint as if he was in a bit of pain, and I'd have him lie down, rub his ear and scratch his lower back, until he dissolved into ecstasy again for a couple minutes.  I didn't rush those times with Cody, feeling that he deserved all of my attention.

I'd work until about 5:30 pm each day before I retired in 2015, but after retirement in the last year and a half, I often went downstairs and read in my reading room or worked on a jigsaw puzzle in late afternoon.  He would leave his futon and join me in the living room, lying a couple feet from me.  He wanted to be close to me, and so I would often leave what I was doing and rub his body all over.  When he was really content, he'd roll on his back and wave all four paws in the air.

I'd often watch the evening news, and he'd come into the family room to await dinner.  Within a few minutes of 6:00 pm, I'd simply say to him, "Food."  He'd jump up, go over to his food bowl, and look at me.  I didn't give him pills at dinner, for they would come later in the evening from Suzanne.  He'd get the same amount of food for dinner as he did for breakfast and lunch, and his reactions were the same--laps around the futon and diving for the food when it was placed on his mat.  After eating, I'd let him run into the front yard to pee.  I was never afraid of him going into the street, once he got to be an adult dog, because he knew the boundaries very well.

Then he'd get back on his futon, and I'd watch TV until Suzanne got home from work.  Before we got our new garage door, he could hear the old door open and would jump off the futon and head to the garage entry door.  After we got our new door, I'd hear the door opening first and say, "Cody, mom's home."  The two of us always greeted her in the driveway, once she was out of the car.

Our evenings were wonderful, just the three of us.  I sat in my chair, and Suzanne shared the futon with Cody, while we watched TV.  She'd have little bits of kibble or apple for him, like a dessert of sorts, and he'd lie there on the futon staring at her until he'd gotten each little treat.  By 8:30 or 9:00, he'd get off the futon and sit down near the kitchen, looking back at us.  It was evening pill-bomb time.  Suzanne would get all his pills and give him four or five pill-bombs--pills wrapped in wet dog food.  We never told him to sit; he just sat on his own, and he'd inch slightly toward her in anticipation.  Once he got a pill, he'd circle next to her, scan the floor to see if she dropped anything, and sit for his next pill-bomb.  It was just amazing to watch--another behavior that he taught us.

When it was time for bed, I'd change into my night clothes, and he'd wait expectantly outside the walk-in closet until I was ready.  I'd say, "Get your toy," and he would run to his toy "altar" in the master bedroom for one of his many tug toys.  He seemed to choose a different one each evening; he didn't have a favorite.

Cody's and my evening play time used to involve a tennis ball, where I'd repeatedly throw the ball down our long, upstairs hallway, have it carom off Suzanne's office door and into her office.  He'd chase the ball, find it, and bring it back to me, dropping it in front of me.  We'd do that for fifteen or twenty minutes; he never got tired.  Later in his life, we switched to the tug toy games.  If I got possession of the toy, he'd run down the hall and wait for me to throw it to him.  He was good at grabbing it out of the air or catching a line-drive.  In the last year or so, when his back and legs got worse, we'd just play tug, and he'd growl with happiness.  Finally, I'd tire out and get up to go brush my teeth.  He'd wait in the hall for one last go at the tug toy, and we usually played a second time.

When we were done with the tug game, Suzanne would take him out one last time, he'd get two more supplement pills, and she or I would bring him up to bed.  He'd jump on the bed and wait for the last game of the day, "left/right."  With four pieces of kibble, Cody had to shake hands (paws) with Suzanne to get each piece.  First the left paw, then the right paw.  He'd get mixed up sometimes, but usually he got it right.  Constant repetition and constant joy.

My last contact each day was after he had lain down at the head of the bed, snuggled against the pillow.  I'd go into the bedroom, kneel on the floor next to him, and stroke his head or body gently.  His tail would pulse in a soft wag, and he'd utter deep moans of pleasure.  I'd kiss him on the forehead and leave the room.

Those were our usual days, and they were wonderful together.  They seldom varied during the week, except that I'd often take Cody to Bean Scene, a Sunnyvale cafe, at 4:00 pm each Friday afternoon.

I'd choose a table outside the cafe, secure Cody on his leash, and he'd naturally face the door as I went in to order my coffee.  Sometimes he could see me, and sometimes he couldn't, but he always stayed still and maintained his gaze.  People would walk by and look at him, but he was devoted and intent on watching for me.  When I emerged, he got a few pieces of kibble, and I read a magazine as he stayed on his mat next to me.  Those were the happiest moments in my life.

Weekends varied somewhat also, because, if weather permitted, I would take him to a nearby field on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to run.  Until late 2015, I'd throw a rope kong for him to chase.  That thing could fly a long distance, but Cody would catch up to it and grab it after only one bounce.  He was extremely fast, running very close to the ground.  He knew the words "right" and "other way" (for "left"), and I'd yell one or the other to steer him in the right direction.  It was amazing to watch him veer to the right, for instance, glance up to catch sight of the kong, and catch it after it had bounced.  He never wanted to stop, so I'd often take home an exhausted dog who would drink a bowl of water and pant for twenty minutes.

When his cruciate ligament and spinal stenosis problems were diagnosed in early 2016, we stopped our hard runs with the kong, and I simply let him follow me as we circled the large field a couple times.  He never got far away from me, and if another dog appeared, I'd let him play some.  If I started to walk away, he'd follow me (usually without being told) rather than stay with the other dog.  We were so connected.

Occasionally we would take him with us to dinner on Saturday nights.  We would sit in a sidewalk cafe with Cody next to the table on his mat, and everyone complimented him.  He'd get a few treats and never disturb us while we ate dinner and had a bottle of wine.  Those were great evenings.

Another change with our weekend routine is that Suzanne would walk him on Sundays at noon. often with a halter harness for extra training.  At the corner of our street at the end of his walk, she'd place the plastic-encased leash in his mouth and say, "Stroll."  He'd prance down the street all the way to our driveway and meet her at the front door, without dropping the leash.  He really looked forward to that, it seemed.

Finally, our weekly routine almost always ended with lattes at a coffee place early Sunday evening.  Usually we went to Mountain View's Castro Street Starbucks, where there are lots of people and dogs who pass by.  Cody was always on his mat, and we'd give him small pieces of kibble as we ran through his commands--"high five," "off" (with kibble set atop his paws), "take it" (to get the kibble), "whisper," "down," etc.  When people or friendly dogs approached and wanted to engage with Cody, we'd say, "Go See," and he'd trot over to them.  We talked with hundreds of people over the years about Cody and dog training; he added to the lives of a lot of people.

Years ago we befriended a homeless man who we'd often see around Starbucks.  Jeff loved to talk, but he usually forgot that we'd ever met.  We listened to his life story each week and helped him along a bit.  It never failed that, mid-way through our conversation, he'd stare at Cody and say, "Man, he's a good looking dog!  What's his name?"

After an hour we'd pack up our things and head back to the car, done for another week.  Maybe we miss that the most in losing him.

Missing Cody

On the first day I held Cody, I whispered to him that I'd take care of him for the rest of his life.  He stayed with us over 11-1/2 years, and I stroked his head and whispered to him as he died.  He lived a very full life, certainly one that was filled with love and caring.  A friend of mine told me that, when he and his wife see a well-cared-for dog, they say, "He won the dog lottery."  Cody won the lottery when we found him.

I miss my boy in a hundred ways each day.  He added a lot of joy to our lives, and when he died, it was like half of the air being sucked out of the room.  I'd like to end this tribute to him by describing a few of the things that I miss:

• I miss playing ball and tug rope with him, taking him for daily walks and weekly runs in the park.

• I miss him coming to lie down next to me wherever I sat in the house.

• I miss wiping up the water that would fall from his mouth whenever he drank out of his water bowl.

• I miss seeing him on his futon couch, stretching and sleeping peacefully.

• I miss his barks when someone rang the doorbell.

• I miss his joy and excitement when it was time for food or pill bombs.

• I miss him watching me as I exercised, wanting to be closer and take part.

• I miss him riding in the back seat of my car, with the back seat especially padded for him.

• I miss his imprint on my bed after he'd had a good nap.

• I miss looking for him each morning and kissing his forehead at the end of each day.

We will certainly get to the time when we don't miss him so much, when we seriously start the search for our next dog, but I don't want to forget how deeply in love I've been with this dog.  And, so, I will always be able to return to this blog for one last reminder.

Thank you for being our dog, Cody.  We love you.