There’s something quietly powerful about the bond between a person and their dog. It’s not loud. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t ask much of you—except everything.
Koda was adopted from the SPCA when she was just a puppy. Her person was 11 years old, and from that moment on, they were a team. A quiet team. A healing team. A team that grew up together, faced milestones, and battled through cancer side by side.
When Koda passed away at 13, her owner wasn’t just losing a dog. She was losing the living thread woven through every chapter of her life. That loss? It wasn’t just grief. It was gravity. It made the air heavier. It made the silence louder.
Even the car she drove, lovingly nicknamed “The Kodamobile,” holds pieces of that history—claw marks on the dash from an excited ride, now turned into relics of joy. And when she recently got into an accident and feared the car might be totaled, it wasn’t just a vehicle she thought she’d lose.
It was one of the last physical echoes of Koda’s presence.
Here’s where this story gets beautifully human: even with all that love and all that grief, there’s guilt. Guilt about imagining a future with another dog. Guilt about moving on. Guilt about wondering whether opening her heart again would be a betrayal.
But here’s what we believe at Cherished Emblems:
Guilt often shows up wearing love’s old clothes.
When we grieve deeply, it’s not because we’re broken. It’s because we were lucky enough to have something worth missing. And when we start to feel our hearts open again—to the idea of new life, new love, new pawprints—it’s not a betrayal.
It’s a continuation.
Koda doesn’t disappear when a new dog arrives. She doesn’t get replaced. She gets remembered—through stories, through laughter, through the claw marks on a dashboard that will probably outlive that car.
Some people carry this remembering in their hearts. Others carry it on their wrist, around their neck, in a tiny charm that whispers, you were loved, and you still are.
That’s what Cherished Emblems was created for. Not to replace grief. Not to fix the ache. But to remind us that love—real, bone-deep, loyalty-soaked love—doesn’t end when someone is gone. It just takes on a new shape.
If you’ve ever loved like that, and you’re wondering if it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling… it is.
You’re not replacing anyone.
You’re continuing a story that never really ended.
You can read the original story about Koda here.
And when you’re ready—whether it’s with words, or emblems, or just a quiet nod to the past—we’ll be here.
Because:
I promise that I will always remember.
