Notes on Bella

She’s tricky, that dog of mine. She’s gotten me to fall madly in love with her without my even realizing it. TRICKY BELLA.

When SK and I first talked about getting a dog, we had different ideas about what we would end up with. He wanted a Boxer, I wanted a Lab. He wanted to wait until we got a house, I wanted the dog RIGHT NOW. He wanted to get a tiny little puppy, I didn’t mind if the dog was a few months old. The only thing we agreed on was that the dog had to be a girl.

So when SK went to Canada with his dad, I went just to look at puppies with Chandra. Um, sure. I saw Bella and practically threw my purse at the breeder, screaming take whatever you want as long as I can take her with me!! I brought her home that day, 12 weeks old and adorable, and she was my roommate for the next 2 weeks while SK was gone.

She was a lab, she was living in our apartment, and she was not a tiny baby puppy. Hee…

She was a happy dog. Wary of new people, but not scared. She didn’t cry the first night I brought her home, and seemed to adapt to her kennel pretty well. She ate whatever kind of food I gave her, revealed to me her love for ice cubes, and wagged her tail so hard that I thought she was going to shake herself over. She played with her toys, didn’t chew anything she wasn’t supposed to chew, and was OK at the potty training thing.

And then the worms happened. She has had worms 3 times in her short 10 month life. The breeder I bought her from promised me she had been wormed, and even gave me a vet sticker to prove it. LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE! I noticed them the second day she was with me, right before I took her into the vet’s office, which was convenient. The vet gave me the meds to give her and she was clean and worm-free within a week. I noticed them again about a month a half later. She had a run-in with some angry fleas and dogs get worms by eating them (barf), so apparently she had ingested the gross little hoppers and BAM! Worm city. Again to the vet, again with the meds, again with the worm-freeness. Round 3 had me pulling my hair out. The fleas were gone! There was no more scratching! Yet, there they were, wormy and nasty. To top it off, the severe scratching she had been doing from the fleas had left her with big scrapes on her sides and legs which then got infected and all of a sudden my dog is trying to be a high school wrestler with her staph infection. In all, I have totaled her random sickness vet bills and let me just put it to you this way—Bella could have had A LOT of puppy friends to play with right now if she hadn’t made me spend all that cash on worm pills and vaccines.

Despite the promise she showed early on with the potty training, getting her to make it outside and down 3 flights of stairs has been a challenge. She went through a phase where she would sit by the front door for a few seconds, decide we weren’t moving fast enough and then pee all over the floor. Then there were the few months when she would sit by the door, cry for a minute, and then walk to the middle of whatever room we were in and just pee right in front of us. Now, she often goes to sit by A door, not necessarily the FRONT door. She is much better at holding it and rarely has accidents, but they happen. It’s been frustrating, but I think we have finally reached a place where we’re all finally starting to GET IT.

**Likely, she will pee in the hall today. Just because I said that.

She’s a cool dog though. She’s funny and keeps SK and me laughing. She can’t stand to not be involved in whatever we are doing. Whatever aloofness she had as a puppy is completely gone. She follows us from room to room, even as we are getting ready for work in the morning. She HAS to sit in between us on the couch, and wants to be included in all hugs and kisses. She cuddles right up to me on the couch, and likes to stretch out on our bed. She sleeps for hours right in the middle of the day, which also leads me to think that maybe she and SK have a little bit of the same genetic makeup.

While I would consider myself an animal lover (not so much cats though…) I have never understood the people who would drop thousands of dollars on their pets. Really? Because your dog was lame and ate a computer, you are going to fork over 3 grand to get it extracted from their stomach? Nuh uh. No freaking way! I never got those people.

Until Bella.

If that dog needed a kidney and I was a positive match, I would cut it out myself, put it on ice and throw the cooler to her vet.

This scares me as I have always viewed children in much the same manner as pets, and now that I have a soft place in my formerly stone-cold heart for my dog I am worried that I might be thawing too rapidly. I am hyperventilating at my computer right now OHMYGOD.