08/17/2026
Saying goodbye to a dog you dearly love is heart-breaking...Being a "mom" to so many senior FOREVER FOSTERS through the years I have been through it so many times. Today was one of the heart wrenching days when it was time to say good-bye to FOREVER FOSTER Cody. He had been with me 8 years now and was an adult when he came here. No one got to know him well but me, as he saw his role as the protector of the house so had to be crated if someone came to visit. He did bite a couple of times before we realized he took his job so seriously. He had been abandoned at a Veterinary office, then adopted out but returned quickly. We were asked if we could take him but never had any history about him. We did find out, a few years down the road, by taking an x-ray of his heart that he had been shot at some time and still had pieces of buckshot in him. That same x-ray showed Cody had an enlarged heart and that was 5 or 6 years ago. He was a dog that seemed to be wired incorrectly so was a constant barker. He was on Prozac which did not do much but kept him a little less frazzled. A DNA test reported he was 1/4 Japanese Chin, 1/4 Papillion, 1/4 Shih Tzu, 1/4 Chihuahua. As time went by, he was on the heart med trio...Vetmedin, Enalapril and Furosemide but recently had had scary episodes where he would basically pass out when he got a surge of excitement and appear dead but within about 30-40 seconds would be back to normal. But this last week the dry harsh coughing started and the past few days he coughed continuously for over 36 hours straight. I don't think mentally he was ready to go but exhaustion and his heart had a different idea. Things were not going to get better, they were only going to get worse, so we made the tearful trip to his Vet today for the final time. Maybe because he was the "bad boy" kind of dog, and the fact that I was "his person", this hit me even harder than usual. I kept remembering what my old Vet from many years ago told me when I had to have my first Chin put to sleep..."this is your final act of love, to say goodbye even though your heart breaks." Until we meet again dear Cody.
