Cocoa

Cocoa Mo is what I'd call her. She was so full of personality but I think a better way to describe her her would be to tell you the story of her life. On one nice sunny day my dad and his girlfriend Crystal at the time took me and my sister to what I thought was Crystal's friend's house. The most special thing in this house was her. The first day I met her we played for as long as my little legs could handle running back and forth in the backyard, with a cat. Throwing toys for her, taking her on a walk to the park, and enjoying her radiant presence. Little did I know this wasn't Crystal's friend's house really, my dad was looking to adopt Cocoa Mo! It was a bittersweet moment. As it was the beginning of my love and passion for her pit bull breed, it was also a heartbreaking end of the bond she had with her previous family. I felt terrible to know this family that loved her so much, was crying and waving at her as we took her home. What I was certain of though, was we would ensure her to be the most loved, taken care of, spoiled little girl. She was pretty scared at first, a new place, new people, she couldn't help but to poop (although she was potty trained) at the thought of her whole life changing. Dad was upset with her but he let it go because of the enormous events she had for the day. It took only but a few days for her to get comfortable. We lived in an apartment but my favorite part of the day way taking her to run in the church field next door. The way she'd sprint into the sticker bushes after the bunnies, the way she was so curious of everything that moved or made sound, the way she stalked her prey before they'd outrun her over the fence. She was so beautiful. I fell in love with her form, her smile after a few hours at the field, her warm snuggles I'd get the whole night after the field. All I wanted was for her to be happy and healthy. Unfortunately at the time, there weren't very many studies or information for consumers about dog food but we'll come back to that later. She has forever taken a spot in the hearts of me and my family. She was a Staffordshire bull terrier, beautiful fawn color with white socks, tummy, and face strap. We lived in the apartment until she was about four or five and she moved to her forever home on an eight acre farm in Corbett, OR. Her days were FILLED with her favorite hobby; stalking her prey. She had all the room she needed to run around and let her natural dog instincts come out. We'd always fill her food bowl but anytime she saw it was empty she through a huge fit, picking her metal bowl up in her mouth and slamming it all over the back room with her loud yelps of despair. When you'd fill it, most of the time she would look at it, see its full, and not even touch it. She'd definitely let you know when she needed to go outside too! She didn't care she just went out five minutes ago, she wanted out again and she would stop at nothing to make you let her out. She was like having a person around, she'd listen to you and you may think I'm cray for saying this but she would respond to you. She'd respond with facial expressions, whimpers, barks, a tail wag, or even snuggles. She was the most wonderful thing in my life for some time, when I felt everyone and everything was against me I knew she would always love me. As the years go on, my dad feeds her the same NutroNugget advanced formula he had fed her, her whole life. But, I start to notice differences. Her stomach is widening, she's getting small random bumps that don't go away under her skins, and she's not going outside as much anymore. I wish I had known when I was ten and first got her what I know now. It could have made her life even better. After some research I found out the truth behind dog food. It's a very sad and terrible reality for our best friends. The dog food companies don't care about our dogs. I found out that dog food was never meant to be in middle form like it is now. Back in the World War II days, they didn't want the dog food supply getting mixed up with the human food supply since they were both canned so the government made the dog food companies turn to putting the contents in bags. Who'd imagine animals weren't supposed to eat kibbles? (Sarcasm). Kibbles are filled with a bunch of grains and preservatives to make the shelf life last longer and kibbles are cheaper to make. Many words they use on the packaging are patented by large animal food companies to sound good but not hold up to what we would consider the wording to mean. Words "flavor," "dinner," "organic," and "grain-free." These are all patented words and a lot of the time the food only has to contain less than three percent of what they claim to be. These marketing scams caused the drastic ending for my best friend. Years of feeding your pet these things causes many health problems, one of which being cancer.. As I mentioned before Cocoa started getting lumps in her last years of life, we were told by vets that they were nothing and they were normal and would go away. They didn't go away a year or two later, they got worse. They ended up getting so bad her neck was double the size and she was having trouble breathing. In her last few days the lumps grew and grew noticeably bigger. She was so miserable my dad thought she'd be happier being put down in the backyard. The very next night my dad took her out back and buried her in the ground of her favorite place on Earth, at home. I will never forget my first best friend, Cocoa.