Putting
Cody
Cody had been in our family for 9 years. While we love him, he was never quite right. He was untrainable and with his incessant drooling, peeing on the carpet, gnawing on the furniture, not to mention his howling and barking, he was source of constant agitation. Still, problems and all, he was ours and we did love him.
We kept a shock collar on him with Invisible Fencing around our yard so he wouldn’t wander off. Some thought it cruel but we were trying to keep him from getting lost. At off moments he had a weird light in his unfocused, distant eyes that frightened the neighbors but he was generally good with the Twins. With a few treats, they could usually make him behave.
The older he got, the more unstable he became. One day, in a fit of froth and frenzy, he bit both of the Twins who locked him in his closet till I got home from work. That’s when I realized we had to put Cody to sleep.
We heard about a program run by the Human Society*, a non-profit specializing in organ reclamation. In the back of my mind, I had always known this was an eventuality but my wife and I had avoided the subject. We genuinely loved Cody but once he had tasted blood, it was time to terminate. He had become dangerous.
Our neighborhood pharmacist gave me a tranquilizer to put in his food. She assured me it would be painless. I mixed it with his food, slipped his bowl under the door to his bad boy room, an unused coat closet, and in just a few minutes, the growling and scratching stopped.
It was hard, but it had to be done. Cody was slumped to the floor quietly whimpering. I took a deep breath, turned off his shock collar, muzzled and bound him and loaded him in the van. After a quick drive, we arrived at the Human Society* where I signed the forms while my wife and the Twins wept in the waiting room. Secretly, I think we all were glad for the closure.
Cody never regained consciousness. We took his Death Certificate and, avoiding eye contact with each other, we went home. The upside to that sad day was that our family was given 50,000 spending credits to use at the hospital or vacation spot of our choice. The certificate was titled Cody’s Final Gift.
His organs were quickly harvested and given to needy children, children who were critically ill but, unlike Cody, were fortunate enough to have been born “normal.”
(*not the Humane Society)
Bryan Hupperts © 2006 – 2008
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