Cozmo: A tribute

Cozmo's bed with his favorite toys

Last night our West Texas household got a little smaller with the sudden passing of one of our dogs, Cozmo, for reasons that are still unknown to us.

But I won't dwell on what happened last night, because that was but a short blip in the time that I knew him, and the time that his family had with him.

Cozmo (R) and Yogi

Cozmo was one pup out of 13, and was such a voracious eater that when Levi met him, he said he had to pull Cozmo off of the teat just to give the other pups a chance. Cozmo also ended up being the last of his litter.

In the short two months that I knew him, Cozmo was nothing but a big goofball. A large lab mixed with a Newfoundland, Cozmo was a big dog. A really big dog. So big that the first time I took him and Yogi out for a walk, people would stop me on the street to look at him and ask what he was.

And despite his size, he was the sweetest dog. Even when Yogi was bouncing off the walls (literally) and running all over the place, there would stand Cozmo, calmly ignoring his brother's antics. But when you could get Cozmo riled up, there was nothing happier than seeing him lift his big face in the air for a half-hearted attempt to get a ball that was probably already in Yogi's mouth or wrestling his brother down to the ground.

Cozmo was as quarky as he was kind. No, he wouldn't drink from his bowl unless it had just the right amount of water in it; if that wasn't good enough, he would drink out of the kiddy pool outside. If he was hot, he would simply lay down in the same kiddy pool that he just drank from. And don't stand around when he gets up from there, unless you want to end up like that scene from Beethoven.

Just run away.

Levi and Heidi told me that Cozmo was most in his element when he was in the water, and unfortunately we don't have much of that out here in West Texas. But I found some photos from last year of him in his element and with a much, much smaller Yogi.

So Cozmo, here's to you bud. You lived a good life, you brought a lot to our lives, and we're all going to miss you. We'll be looking for you in that big bright sky buddy.