This is Cody, our 16 year old Shih Tzu. We adopted him when he was 4 (they thought he was 2 when we applied for him, but found some of his original papers so they gave us a $50 discount!). He has been such a great addition to the family.

I didn’t have a pet while I was growing up. My mother told us she was afraid of animals. She was uncomfortable whenever we went to a family friend’s house who had a Pekingnese dog, (although he was a yappy, snappy thing they kept in the basement, Lucky freaked me out too). My dad brought a kitten home once, that lasted about 3 weeks with us before my mom found it another home. Mom said we could get a pet when we had homes of our own. I only found out years later that she did have pets while she was young. But their association with horrible childhood memories of war prevented her from having pets as an adult.

Flash forward to 12 years ago. The kids had finally worn us down, and despite it being the busiest of times for our household, with all the lessons, competitive sports, school, and the two of us with jobs that involved travel – I decided to find a dog for us. We also had the assistance of a nanny at the time, who was a pet lover – that was what sealed the deal. There was no way we would have been able to welcome Cody without Abie. And Mom loves Cody – she even made a sweater for her grand furbaby:

That’s Cody in his favourite nook, with his favourite cushion. It’s mostly just the two of us who are with him now – the kids have their busy lives mostly away from home. He’s a trooper, withstood two big dental surgeries (such a stubborn breed, he never let us brush his teeth); surgery for his bladder stones; glaucoma; and he’s a cancer survivor. Diagnosed through bloodwork, he never developed symptoms of myeloma – we were able to get him on treatment quickly and he went into remission for a bit, then it came back. He’s on maintenance chemotherapy now and he’s well managed.

He’s blind (he can sort of see shadows) and likely a little deaf; at night he wanders the house a little directionless -so he’s definitely got his senior moments. He always slept most of the day- nowadays he’s likely only awake a couple of hours a day. He is very unsettled when we aren’t around, and we’ve tried to take him on vacations to dog friendly spots – but he is too out of sorts. I get it, he knows where he is at home but elsewhere he’s lost. He has a routine. So rather than being empty-nesters, we’re sort of stuck at home unless one of the kids can stay with him.

An interesting thing happened the other day. There was a door to door salesperson who came by trying to sell us on a new internet plan. We’ve been in this house since my son was born and we know which service works and doesn’t. This fellow was particularly adamant, and my husband was polite in saying no, but it did take a little while for him to move off. And just as the salesperson finally left, Cody started barking like crazy. We haven’t heard Cody bark in probably about 2 years – since he lost his sight.

Cody has always had the loudest, most vicious bark – I suppose with him being 13 pounds when wet, his bark is pretty much all he has. So in that sense, he was always a great guard dog.

I guess he’s still got some of that guard dog ability – who knew?