Mans Best Friend

Last Wednesday my little sister got life flighted. When your on chemotherapy it makes your immune system very weak, and it very easy for someone with a weak immune system to get sick very quickly. Your immune system helps you fight of sickness and get you better faster. When your immune system is damaged it doesn't help you like it's supposed to.So, when you get something like a common cold it could be deadly to a person thats immune system is very weak like my younger sisters.


I was baby sitting my sister and she was playing with cocoa. Everything seemed to be perfectly fine. Then I heard my sister run to the bathroom and slam the door shut. At first I didn't think anything of it because my sister is always getting sick due to the chemotherapy. However, I new something was wrong when Cocoa was pawing at the bathroom door and she was still in the bathroom after 15mins..

So I went to the bathroom and found my sister laying on the floor crying, and telling me that she didn't feel good. I panicked because I had mentioned earlier her immune system is very weak and any kind of anything could become very deadly . I didn't have time to wait so I put my sister in my car and drover her to Licking Memorial Hospital. From there she was life flighted to Childrens Hospital.

My sister has been in the hospital since Wednesday, and I am taking care of Cocoa. Cocoa seemed to know that something wasn't right because he wasn't his normal self. Instead of being his normal self ( which includes chewing on shoes, barking at anything he see's outside, running around in circles to entertain himself when everyone else is busy, and much more), he just seemed to mope. Cocoa would just lie around only getting up long enough to go outside and eat. He was very lifeless. By Friday he was starting to scare me and I new my little sister would be very upset if anything happened to him. So, I took him to the vet.

The vet said that Cocoa was going to be okay. He was just probably depressed because he new that something was wrong with my sister, but he didn't know what. He told me to have him listen to my sister voice on the telephone and he should seem to perk back up to more of his normal self. So, that night I called my moms cell phone and had her put my sister on the phone. I told my sister that I was going to put Cocoa on the phone so that he could hear her voice because he missed her. When I put Cocoa near the phone and he heard my little sisters voice his whole body shook with excitment. I had to keep a very good hold on him because he was shaking so hard I thought I would drop him.

After talking to my sister Cocoa seemed to become his normal self. My sister is still in the hospital, but if everything goes as good as it is they are saying she can come home on Tuesday. I can't wait to see Cocoa when he finally gets to see my sister. I still have Cocoa listen to my sisters voice everynight, but I couldn't believe how muched he missed her when she first left. Dogs really are Mans Best Friend. Just like I know that Cocoa is my sisters Best Friend.

What a Fan Hog!!

Okay in my last post I mentioned a pee pad, and for those of you who aren't really sure what that is let me take a moment and briefly explain. A pee pad is square that you put someplace out of the way that the dog can find. A pee pad has an absorbent side that the dog can go to the bathroom on.

My sister gets hot flashes a lot so she has four fans in her room that are usually always on. Whenever I go into her room I always have to wear a sweatshirt and I always have to have at least one blanket on me at all times. My sister has to go to chemo due to her illness, and one of the side effects of the chemo is that it gives my sister really bad hot flashes. ( Which for those of you who aren't sure what a hot flash is I'll tell you. A hot flash is when you get really hot no matter what the temperature may be outside, and in my sisters case she has to have a bunch of fans blowing on her before she can be comfortable in a room)

Anyways, I'm sitting in my sisters room with her right now as I'm posting this and personally I thinks it's freezing, but my sister thinks it feels just perfect but what can I do it's her room. Cocoa is also in her room,( as usual) and he is laying right in front of one of the fans in her room. He is laying on his back with his legs in the air and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth. He looks so content and happy.

I told my sister to look at the dog, because right now he looks pretty funny, and she said that he does that every time that she has the fans turned on. She calls him her little fan hog. He would rather sleep on the floor in front of one of the fans then sleep in her bed. She also said that when she turns the fans off Cocoa will sit up and look at the fan like, " what the hell just happened, where did all the cold air go?" She said that if she doesn't turn the fan back on the dog will then proceed to bark at the fan and start to chew on it till my sister turns it back on for him. He is such a spoiled little puppy.

The Beginning!!

On Christmas my little sister received a puppy. He was about a foot and a half long and he was brown all over his body except for a small white spot on the top of his head. This is how his name came to be Cocoa.

At first Cocoa was shy and just sat on my sisters or someones lap. Then he gradually became comfortable with his surroundings and started sniffing and exploring the house. My mother has a malti-poo and a pomeranian who have been living with us now for about seven years, and for those seven years they have been the only two dogs in the house. So, as you can imagine they were not happy with the new addition to the family. When my mother would play with the new puppy the other two dogs would get jealous and try to steal my mothers attention, but as everyone knows that's not an easy thing to do when a new puppy is in the house.

Throughout the day and many days after we had to keep a close eye on Cocoa because he wasn't potty trained yet and if he did anything in the house my mother would probably have a heart attack( she suffers from OCD).

Because of my sisters illness she can't always take him outside. Her chemotherapy sometimes makes her sick to her stomach and getting up to let the dog out is sometimes just not an option for her. So, she decided too train Cocoa to use a puppy pad. That way if she is unable to take the dog outside and there is no one else in the house to do it the dog won't have an accident on the floor. Training Cocoa to use the puppy pad was not a very difficult thing to do luckily.Which was a good thing because sometimes it can be a little difficult to train a dog to use a puppy pad. The pad has a scent on it that makes the dog want to use it. Also my sister put the pad in her room because that is where the dog will spend a lot of his time do to the fact that my sister doesn't really get to do much.

There are other methods to potty training your dog, but using the puppy pads was just one of the methods that suited our situation best.

Welcome to Life with Cocoa

The blog Life with Cocoa is about life with a new puppy in the house. Puppies are cute, cuddley, sweet, and loveable. However, they are also messy, don't listen very well, eat things they aren't supposed to (but then again even full grown dogs eat things that they aren't supposed too), and the list goes on and on.

Recently my family found out that my sister Kate ( my sisters name has been changed for privacy reasons) has cancer. We were all shocked by the news, but my sister at eleven years old seemed to take the news a lot better than the rest of us which to me was a little surprising, because she is the one that is fighting this terrible illness that no person should ever have to experience. She had to stop playing sports which I know was very hard for her because she plays sports all year long, but once again she surprised me by not complaining, but taking everything all in stride.

So, for christmas our family got her a puppy. She had been asking our parents for one for the past couple of years, and they finally gave her one becaus of how brave she was being. This is how Cocoa came to be a part of my family.