Dog Heaven

Sweet Cody went to dog heaven Sunday morning, and we are heartbroken to have lost both Cody and Tanner so close together.

Quite unexpectedly Cody died in his sleep, seemingly painlessly, sometime early in the morning. I woke up around 2:30 am to cover up Anna Claire, and he was actually in their room, so I shooed him out and went back to bed. I heard him just a few minutes later moving around in the hallway "making his bed" as he liked to do. When Anna Claire and I woke up around 7am he had moved to his spot near the kitchen where I thought he was sleeping. He knows my morning routine, and he usually waits for me to get my coffee before asking to go out...which is what I thought he was doing.

A few minutes later Walter got up and realized something was wrong. To say we were in shock was an understatement. Cody had seemed very depressed since losing his best buddy back in September, but was otherwise, to our knowledge, healthy despite needing to lose a few pounds.

Nothing in his routine had changed...still lazy as ever, eating and drinking fine, letting Mallory brush him, howling like a hound dog at trains, barking at the neighbors' dogs, stealing the girls' lovies...nothing to indicate to us that anything was wrong. Walter talked to Chad who said it could have been a blot clot or sometimes large~breed dogs have issues with their spleen, but basically we have no clue what went wrong.

We miss Cody so much. It's so odd not having him as part of our lives anymore. I've caught myself a million times getting ready to tell the girls to pick something up off the floor before Cody gets it. He was definitely a sweet dog with great manners who even knew a few tricks! Losing Tanner was hard and we still miss him, but I think we believed we'd have Cody for years and years to come. Now, with no dogs in the house, things are so quiet {no, really}.

I thought I'd share the book that has been a huge help to all of us ~ Dog Heaven. I learned about it from Holly and later found out Michelle actually had it already. I bought it when we knew we were going to have to put Tanner down, so I would have it ready when we told the girls {they love it}, and we read it again when we told Anna Claire and Mallory about Cody {they've taken it pretty well, actually}.

We've been talking to them {when they ask} about how much Cody missed Tanner and how they are both together now in dog heaven sleeping on clouds, barking at geese and eating squirrel~shaped dog biscuits. Sweet boys! We miss them so much.