05/08/2026
In Loving Memory of Kodiak
March 19, 2012 — May 4, 2026
The golden doodle who saved a life, and then taught a man how to save others.
In May of 2012, my wife and I brought home a mini golden doodle puppy. He was small and boundless and full of life — everything we needed in a home that was about to be tested in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
Almost at the same moment, I received a diagnosis that would change everything: end-stage liver failure, with cancerous tumors on my liver. My body was failing me. And yet, there was this puppy — curious, warm, insistent on being loved — who had no idea what we were walking into together.
We named him Kodiak.
Managing a puppy while fighting for your life is not easy. But with the grace of God, family, good neighbors and dear friends, we made it work — because Kodiak made it necessary to.
Through all of it — the illness, the waiting, the fear — I trained Kodiak. Not because life was easy, but because it gave us both purpose. I taught him specific item retrieval throughout our home, so that when I couldn’t always move freely, he could bring the world to me. I trained him in diabetic alert, a skill that proved invaluable as I managed Type 2 diabetes on insulin through the darkest stretch of my health.
On February 4, 2013, I received the gift of life: a liver transplant. What carried me through those months of waiting, of uncertainty, of mornings when getting up felt impossible — was in large part a golden doodle who simply needed me to keep going.
He didn’t know he was helping me survive. He just loved me. And sometimes, that is the most powerful medicine there is.
Kodiak grew into a 50-pound miracle of a dog. Gentle enough to sit beside someone suffering. Smart enough to learn tasks that most dogs never attempt. Loyal enough to stay.
Training Kodiak lit something in me. I discovered a gift I didn’t know I had — an ability to understand dogs, to communicate with them, to bring out their best. What began as a necessity became a calling. That calling became Positive Pup Dog Training.
Every dog I’ve worked with since, every family I’ve helped, every skill I’ve passed on — it all traces back to those months in 2012 when a sick man and a little golden doodle figured out how to take care of each other. Kodiak didn’t just help me heal. He handed me a new life to live, and a new purpose to live it for.
Kodiak gave me love and taught me love. He showed me that healing and purpose can come from the most unexpected places — from a puppy who arrived right when things fell apart, and somehow helped hold them together. He was not just a dog. He was a partner. A healer. The founder — in every sense that matters — of this business and the man who runs it.
I know he is not suffering anymore. I know he is in a better place. And I know that every dog I help from here forward carries a little piece of what Kodiak gave to me.
Run free, Kodiak. You earned every bit of it.
March 19, 2012 — May 4, 2026. Fourteen years of a life fully lived, fully loved, and forever woven into ours. Thank you, boy. For everything.
With all our love,
Jeff & Laurie, Our Family, and Positive Pup Dog Training 🐾
