Cody’s Story (21 years old!)

I had a lot of requests to tell Cody’s story and provide any hints as to how he lived 21 years.  I wrote a rather long story below; I hope you all enjoy it.  What tips/tricks/tidbits you may glean from this is up to you.  These are just my experience with Cody and how he may have beat all the odds.

About me: I have had at least one dog my entire life.  My earliest memories is of my father strapping me to a sled and having our German Shepherd (Mike) run down the street with me having a great old time until Mike decided to go over the drainage ditch and drag me on my face for couple dozen feet.  No harm done (I think).

Anyhow, we raised German Shepherds for a while and then I went to College.  I got Cody as a gift in 1990 from my sister at Christmas.  He was the first Golden Retriever I had ever had.  He was special, in the way all our pups are special, and my buddy from day one.

I have been a firm believer in feeding dogs quality food without going overboard.  I know there’s a lot of talk about raw food and making your own but I have a practical side too; how long would I keep up with getting raw food and making it when there is quality food to be got from a bag or a can.  The rules I always followed when finding or trying new dog food is 1. If it smells good to you, it probably isn’t all that good for the dog.  2. If it contains rice or corn as one of the first few ingredients, there’s too much filler.  This will cause excessive .. um … pooping… there I said it!   Anyhow, if you eat corn Sunday night, what do you see in the toilet Monday morning?  It’s the same for dogs.  Just filler.

There are a lot of quality dog foods out there.  None can normally be found at your local grocery store.  Just go to a pet store and look for the “more expensive” brands.  Think about this for a minute.  If you feed your dog corn dog food, it will want/need more of that food to maintain the proper balance of protein.  So, you buy more.  If you feed your dog a high protein food that doesn’t have these fillers, they eat less.  Ergo…less poop!  There’s more to it than that but there’s the part you’ll key into right away.  So the “more expensive” brands will last longer.

I began feeding Cody Bil-Jac frozen food.  This is wonderful stuff!  He loved it and couldn’t be happier.  Problem was I didn’t have much room in the freezer for human food.  So, I decided to try to find a dry food that he would eat and have about the same results.  My vet turned me onto Eukanuba.  If you were to read the ingredients maybe 10 years ago, they sounded wonderful.  No rice, no corn, lots of protein and Cody loved it!  Then IAMS purchased the brand and “improved” it by adding corn… back to the drawing board.   I more or less arbitrarily chose Canidae brand food.  A couple things caught my eye.  No fillers (as described above) and they had an all-stage dog food that would work from puppy through senior.  This was great because I had just acquired a puppy and the thought of trying to separate the food gave me nightmares.  Cody was about 10 at this time.  Both loved the food and the rest is history.

Did I strictly stick to only this food for the dogs?  NOPE!  How could anyone not give a treat once in a while.  Besides dog biscuits (also from a good source), I would give table scraps once in a while and/or mix it in with their food.  Not enough that they expected it every night but left-over roast beef or gravy went a long way to putting a smile on all our faces.  Sodium be damned!  Yea I knew some of you were thinking that.  Again, it was a rare treat.

So that’s the story about the food.  I still feed my dogs Canidae and have no intention of going to anything else.

Medical history:  Cody got regular checkups.  I started taking him to a local vet (Columbus, Ohio) but I purchased a puppy from a woman who had a farm out in the styx.  She got me in touch with her vet.  They take care of farm animals of all types and, right from the start, I got a better feeling from them than the city-vets I had been using.  It was a little bit of a drive, but they were no-nonsense, listened to you, remembered my dog from prior visits (without looking at their history) and seemed to really care.   And, get this, were about 30% of the cost of the city ones!

Cody was allergic to 168 different things.  I found this out when he continuously had ear infections and was biting his feet a lot.  They did allergy tests and that was the result.  Luckily, he wasn’t allergic to humans (yes that’s a thing!).   We started an allergy adjustment program that essentially involved giving him a little shot every day for a year.  I did them at home.  At the end, we had eliminated about 100 allergies and he was doing much better.

He had a weeping tumor on his neck.  At the age of 15, he acquired a sore on the back of his neck that simply would not heal.  It sounds kinda as gross as it was but it wasn’t very large.   We tried a number of things but finally determined that he needed to have it removed.  I called a local city vet.  I was concerned that this was an operation and wasn’t sure I wanted him to be so far away as the farm vet I was used to.  They were very hesitant.  They agreed it should be done but were concerned that if he was put under anesthetic, being this old, he may not wake up.   Plus it was going to cost $1800.   I called the farm vet and explained the situation.  I told them that when giving him his shots he didn’t mind a bit.  They said a local was probably all he needed so that was a relief.  I asked how much.  I will never forget the response (imagine country twang here) “well we can cut the bawls off a horse for about $300 so I  gotta think it would be about that much.”  No joke.  That’s what he said and that was how much it was!

Moral of the story: find a good vet.  One that you really feel comfortable with.  One that you can trust and isn’t just blowing smoke up your beee-hind just to make you happy or to get the work.

Cody had lots and lots of play time.  We eventually acquired 2 more Golden Retrievers and a Boxer.  But he was M’Lord Alpha King as far as they were concerned.  Heaven help any of them that got a bit over the top with roughhousing and knocked him down!  But it never came to anything more than a significant growl and a lot of groveling for forgiveness.

Cody made it to 21 years of age.  Just short of 22.  He had gotten to the point of being incontinent and he knew it.  He was having some issues walking and just couldn’t have the fun he used to.  It was time.  He was my best friend for 21 wonderful years and will be remembered as long as I live.  You cannot ask for a better pet/friend/companion.