Goodbye buddy.

Growing up I always had a dog, so when my son Cody was born I wanted to get him a puppy. On his first birthday I gave him a beautiful bulldog puppy named Jerico. Cody was a little too young to take care of or really play with a puppy (maybe I jumped the gun a little) so I basically took care of Jerico for the first year of his life.
When Jerico turned one he got bored, as active dogs sometimes do, so he found a new hobby-terrorizing the neighborhood cats. My wife and the neighbors weren’t too happy about this, so we had to put him in a pen. I don’t believe dogs or any of Gods other animals were meant to live in a cage, it broke my heart for Jerico not to be free. At the time I ran a pallet company and most of my day was spent outside or in the plant, so I started taking Jerico with me. For the next six years of Lobo’s life he went everywhere I did. Somewhere along the way he stopped being Cody’s dog and became mine.
Dog lovers will understand when I say, “we just clicked”. He was my best friend, he never got mad at me. No matter what I did or what kind of mood I was in he simply loved me and I loved him. He never went to any kind of obedience school and I never read any books on dog training, but he would do anything I ask of him. He was everything from a burglar alarm to a babysitter. He never would let either of my sons wander off, he stayed right by their sides. I don’t think there is a man alive that could have harmed those boys when Jerico was around. There is no telling how many deer he helped me track down over the years and once he even helped to trail up a neighbors puppy that had wondered off in the woods and gotten lost.
Eventually I started working at MarCraft and Jerico couldn’t come to work with me, so he waited at home. He still met me at my truck when I got home and he went with me on the weekends. As the years went by it started taking him a little longer to get moving in the mornings and it was harder for him to hear me drive up.
In June of 2009 one of my best friends and closest companions for the past 13 years passed on. I was devastated and after most of the tears passed I buried my buddy. Jerico was one of the best dogs I have ever owned and I'll miss him a lot. Goodbye buddy.