My family and I recently found out that our oldest and first dog, Cody has stage 3 kidney disease.
He’s dying.
The doctor said dogs with his condition usually live for about 3-6 months.
I’m gutted. We all are.
I can’t stop thinking about a line in one of my favorite songs by the band Dawes. It’s called, “A little bit of everything.”
It is about relationships, struggles and regret. It’s about the endless and sometimes pointless attempt to explain away why we feel the things that we feel. Pain, joy, suffering, love and all the other emotions that make us so perfectly broken and so imperfectly human.
The first part of the song is about a young man poised to jump off a bridge and end his life. A kind police officer is trying to talk him down. He asks the man why he wants to kill himself. This is what the man says…
Oh, it’s a little bit of everything.
It’s the mountains. It’s the fog.
It’s the news at six o’clock.
It’s the death of my first dog.
I cry every time I hear that song.
That line about his first dog. It’s so specific and simple and heartbreaking.
The first time I heard that song was in 2013. We had Cody for a little over a year at that point. My kids were 11 and 7. If you count in dog years, Cody was probably around 9 or 10. They were all the same age.
My three kids.
I was writing a dad blog called Out-Numbered at the time. I called it Out-Numbered because I had a wife and two daughters. I was the only guy in the house.
When we started looking for a dog, there was never any question that we would get a boy dog.
It just seemed natural.
Because I was outnumbered, we joked that this dog would be my only son. My first-born son.
Finally, some balance.
I wanted to say things like, “come here boy” or “let’s go pal” or “who’s a good boy?”
When we found Cody, he was the only puppy left in the litter. Nobody wanted him because he was too big. We didn’t care about any of that stuff. We had seen pictures and we knew he was the one.
I couldn’t wait to pick him up. I was a 40-year-old man about to get his first dog. A rite of passage. I was so excited to meet the little guy.
When I held him for the first time, I dropped him on his head. To this day, my wife still takes jabs at me for that.
We didn’t tell the girls we were getting a puppy.
It was a complete surprise when we brought him home. It was awesome. One of those rare moments as a parent that makes it seem like you’re doing everything right. Mother and father of the year type stuff. There was no TikTok back then but if there were, I’d like to think that post would have had millions of views.
The kids grew up with Cody. Cody grew up with them.
Brother and sisters.
Father and son.
I’ve heard people say, that as a parent, it’s not your job to be a best friend to your kids. It’s impossible to parent your best friend. It just doesn’t work.
With Cody, I get both. I get to be a dad and a best friend.
My dog is my best friend.
I ask him every day, “who’s a good boy?” He looks at me and I know he knows the answer.
He’s such a good boy.
My sweet baby boy is dying.
I’m not ready for this.
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