#175 A Love Letter to Barney Stinson Parsons

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Your Favorite You.

​

First, I want to thank everyone for all the love that I've gotten about the podcast recently. I've really gotten so many messages reminding me why I do the beautiful work of producing a podcast for you every week.

​

Thank you to those of you who have reached out. It really does remind me that I'm not speaking out into a huge void. And believe me, I need and I love the reminders. So if any of the episodes that you have heard touch something in you, I would love to hear from you about it.

​

And please, if you feel moved, please, please share an episode with a friend or on your social media feed. I'm always looking for ways to reach the people who need to or who would benefit from hearing my take on being and living into a favorite version of yourself.

​

Today, I'm going to do something different. As I am preparing, or probably better said, we are preparing, I, Jon Parsons, to go pick up our new sweet puppy, Frank Costanza Parsons. I'm going to use this episode as a eulogy of sorts for our sweetest puppy, Barney Stinson Parsons.

​

He really was the best dog. Spoiler alert, there's absolutely zero chance that I'm going to get through this episode without crying. I'm already choking up. If you think you can, go ahead and listen as you're driving, but it may not be the best choice for those of you with a heart that is big and feeling like mine.

​

I want to honor Barney Boo, though, before I fall in love with Frank the Tank. Jon and I were so excited to get our first family dog. So in December 2012, incidentally, my dad's last Christmas with us, we decided to surprise Jack and Owen with the news that we were getting a new puppy.

​

Barney had not even been born yet. He was born on January 27th, 2013, and we didn't bring him home until May 7th, 2013. Let me back up. I'm going to try to find the video of the boys learning that we were getting a dog on Christmas morning, 2012.

​

And I will share it with you once I find it. They were shocked and excited. And of course, the anticipation of bringing him home was almost overwhelming for all of us. We were definitely counting down the sleeps until he came to live with us.

​

He was the sweetest pile of fluff that we had ever met. He was so smart and so dumb at the same time. All he ever wanted was to be with us and for one of us to throw the tennis ball incessantly with him at least once a day.

​

If it happened more than once a day, he was the happiest. He thought he won the job. In order to be successful in getting him to drop the tennis ball that he brought back to you and was stingily holding in his mouth, one had to have another tennis ball.

​

Once he saw that you were going to throw that second tennis ball, he would eventually drop the first and chase down the second. We always claimed that he was about 95% lab and 5% poodle. Like I said, he was the smartest, dumbest dog that ever lived.

​

Once you started petting him or giving him head or ear or chin scratches, you had better prepare to never stop. He would put his paw on you over and over and over, sometimes quite demandingly, if you ever tried to stop until he was ready for his nap.

​

He, of course, barked at everything and nothing at all. There would be zero sound audible to our human ears. The house would be peaceful, and then he would bark at whatever he heard that we could not.

​

Usually this led to one of the people with a Y chromosome in our house barking at him for barking, and the game was on. Interestingly, he was friends with the deer that would often congregate in our backyard, and he would chase bunnies and squirrels.

​

I think in all of his 12-plus years of life, he only caught one baby rabbit, but that didn't deter him from thinking that he could catch the next one. He really never gave up. He often, at least multiple times a day, would start a barking match or enter into a barking match started by our neighbor dogs.

​

It has been very quiet around here since he died last month. And I can't help but wonder if the dogs next door are perplexed as to where he and his barking are. All he ever wanted to do was play with them, and he rarely got the chance.

​

He taught us—me, Jon, Jack, and Owen—the benefit of unconditional love. And for that, we will always be grateful. He also taught us the benefit of caring about another living creature at least as much as we cared about ourselves, if not more sometimes.

​

He was a healthy guy for most of his life. He needed to get librela injections to help with his hips as he aged. I think he was trying to be like his dad. So we went in to see Dr. Todd Nash every month for the past nine months or so.

​

And these injections really helped his pain. So they were totally worth it. About that same time, he had a swollen lymph node in one of his hind legs that Dr. Nash was watching. Dr. Nash and I discussed that if it didn't go down, he would need a biopsy, and we briefly talked about our wishes.

​

Should it be lymphoma? I told Dr. Nash that we likely would not put a 12-year-old puppy, he will always be a puppy to me, on chemotherapy. Luckily, the node went down and away, so we didn't have to cross that bridge.

​

About six months ago, we noticed that he was losing a little bit of weight every month, and then a little bit more, then a little bit these past several months. Dr. Nash offered that we could look into the cause and that if we did, we were probably going to find something.

​

We opted to not seek and therefore to not find. He was still happy, eating, albeit less than usual, and he was still interested in chasing that tennis ball with wild abandon every chance we gave him.

​

So we opted to watchfully wait for any pain, any decrease in playfulness, and any change in the quality of his life. His last visit with Dr. Nash was December 7th. At that visit, Dr. Nash asked if we had gotten the letter from him and the staff at Nash Animal Hospital.

​

My response was, what letter? Then Todd proceeded to tell me he was retiring effective December 31st this year, well, 2025. Then my natural response was to burst into tears, as one does in the lobby of the veterinarian.

​

As an aside, now I know how all of the parents at Emerald felt when I told them that I was retiring. I didn't want to do the rest of Barney's life without Dr. Nash. I gathered myself and, of course, wished him well in his retirement.

​

He deserves the R&R that only retirement can bring. And then I told them that I had been thinking about doing lap of love for Barney so that he could die in peace and without pain at our house, eating a cheeseburger and chocolate and gum.

​

This dude loved to eat my damn gum. I guess he didn't know that xylitol was bad for puppies. And he probably honestly didn't give one fuck. He just wanted that damn gum. I told Todd I would have felt guilty if he was still practicing and I chose someone else to euthanize Barney.

​

So I thanked him for helping me make that decision way easier. Being the amazing human that he is, Dr. Nash had given me his personal cell phone number a few years earlier when Barney had an allergic reaction.

​

He told me at that last visit that if I had any problems, I could always reach out to him on his cell. We will always love Dr. Nash. Fast forward to December 23rd. Luckily, the whole family was home.

​

Owen home from break at OSU. Jack and his dog, our grandpuppy Shadow, were also home in anticipation of celebrating Christmas. Barney was fine. He was happy to have all of us humans and his canine nephew at our house.

​

He was playful, eating, drinking water with Shadow. And then suddenly at about 9:30 in the evening, when Jon and I were getting into our PJs for bed, he started vomiting. That was really not that unusual.

​

A few times a year, he would vomit out of nowhere one or two times, and then he would fall asleep and wake up and be fine. This time, however, he started vomiting and couldn't stop. He was such a sweet puppy always that he kept ringing his bells to go outside because he didn't want to make a mess in the house.

​

So I trudged out in the cold in my jammies and my robe and followed him around the yard with the flashlight like a crazy person. He definitely had intractable vomiting. He lay down in the cold grass and I squatted down to pet him and comfort him and I felt his belly.

​

It was huge and hard and the quintessential surgical abdomen. Jon came out shortly after I realized this and I called Dr. Nash who, bless him, answered his cell phone at 9.45 on December 23rd. After I delivered a quick HMP to Dr. Nash, he advised us to go to COVE, which is Central Ohio Veterinary Emergency, which is about 15 minutes away from us. They were wonderful, by the way. So we gathered the boys who had been blissfully unaware at this point.

​

They were both playing NBA 2K with each other and their buddies. So we gathered them up and headed up to Delaware. There was lots of silence and tears on our drive there, we knew that this was likely the end of the road for our sweet Barney Stinson, who had only ever given us love and stinky dog breath.

​

When we walked into Cove, I again gave a brief overview of what had been going on for the past six months and relayed through my tears and barely their voice. You don't have to imagine what it sounds like because I'm giving it to you now.

​

That we were likely there for euthanasia. The kind woman at the front desk called back to triage and said, we have a purple triage. Which I only figured out what that meant at 3 a.m. that same night, leading to another sobbing jag that woke poor Jon up at that hour.

​

The lovely veterinarian came in and asked if she could take him for an x-ray on the off chance that this was something simple, like a sock stuck proximally in his esophagus, that they could simply pull out with a scope and send us on our merry way.

​

We, of course, said yes because we had not considered this possibility. When the vet was out of the room, the four of us discussed that if he needed anything other than a scope, we would be saying thank you, but no thank you, and saying goodbye to our buddy in a few minutes.

​

When she came back in, she said that he had volvulus proximally and distally. You may have heard of it as bloat if you're not in the medical field. She offered to fix the bloat surgically, but was honest and said that it would fix the immediate problem, but would not fix any of his underlying problems causing the weight loss.

​

We all pretty immediately said no to surgery. We didn't want to put him through that, knowing that that choice would have been one we made for us and not one that would benefit Barney. He offered to let us spend a little more time with him before administering the medicine, but we said that we didn't want to see him in pain any longer than absolutely necessary.

​

They brought in a blanket. We all got on the floor with him. They gave him a sedative to make him more comfortable, and we petted him and snuggled with him as he quickly died after they administered the euthanasia medicine.

​

I shared my thoughts immediately with the vet, thanking her for taking such good care of total strangers and their best bud. I also let her know that we wish that we treated humans as well as we treat pets at the end of their life.

​

I also told the boys that I was so grateful that Barney had almost 13 years of an amazing life, less than one hour of any suffering, and died relatively peacefully, surrounded by his four favorite humans in the world.

​

Man, that 15-minute drive home sucked. The big one. And I was so proud of how our family handled this. Of course, I credit a lot of how it was handled by us to coaching, being able to be with one another, holding space for all of us to feel exactly how we needed to feel in that moment and beyond.

​

We were so lucky and happy to have Shadow at home when we got there. It would have truly sucked to have come home to a house with zero puppies that night. At 3 a.m., after a fitful sleep, I woke up and realized that purple triage probably means that they had a patient who was ready to cross the rainbow bridge, being that purple is the last color of the rainbow.

​

And like I said earlier, that led to a sobbing jag that woke Jon up and let us comfort each other again. Cove had offered to send us locks of hair and paw prints if we wanted them, and who could possibly say no to that?

​

I'm sure there are people, but we wanted every remembrance of him that we could possibly have. The card with the locks of hair, balls of fluff, and paw prints arrived on December 26th. They're very efficient at Cove.

​

Jon and I were standing in the kitchen opening mail and both noticed the card from Cove at the same time. We were prepared mentally for the fluff and the paw print. We were absolutely not prepared that there was also nose prints in the mix.

​

Cue another round of sobbing from me and silent tears from Jon. It's so interesting how different reactions are to what we know is coming and the unexpected. Again, thanks to coaching, no words were needed.

​

We just hugged and let each other feel our feelings until we didn't need to anymore. I debated writing all of this out and sharing it with you. I'm so glad the part of me that wanted to share this with you all and have a record of it won out over the part of me that wondered if it would be helpful to anyone but me.

​

We decided as a family that Barney Stinson would not want us to be sad for very long, and we will be healing our hearts with puppy breath and snuggles from our puppy Frank Costanza Parsons. Jon and I are headed to Indianapolis tomorrow to pick him up.

​

I'm glad that I honored Barney in this way in order to allow my heart to grow in love for this new little guy.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!