Saying Goodbye to Our Furry Family Members Never Gets Easy

I haven't written the post to tell you about all my kids with hair or furry family members as I call them.  I had planned to do that soon.  But time has a way of changing our plans.  One day soon I will tell you about all of the furry kids but today I want to talk about my Baby Belle because today she crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.

Belle was a pain in the butt, could be snappy with the kids, was supposed to be a hunting dog but was gun shy and she never, ever got along with any other dogs....but I loved her anyway. 

I remember the day she was born.  My next door neighbors' dog Sassy was an English Pointer and they decided to breed her.   The day the puppies arrived my good friend called me at work, she was a little nervous because this was Sassy's first litter and she had never been there when puppies were born before, so I left the office and came home to sit with her and the kids and Sassy during the birth.  Sassy did just fine and had 6 (I think) beautiful puppies and I went back to work.  Needless to say I was around the puppies alot during the next few months until the neighbors moved to Topeka and we moved to the farm. 

I convinced my husband that we needed one of the puppies so we drove to Topeka to pick up Belle.  I called her "Baby" Belle because we had 5 other dogs at the time and they were all adults.  But the name stuck because Belle never really grew up.....she was always very small, never weighed more than 40 pounds.  As I said above she was also a pain in the butt.  She was a very nervous little thing, never wanted to socialize with any of the other dogs and was very snappy with them.  Part of this is just being a pointer....I swear they will fight about anything at the drop of a hat!  She tried to fight the other dogs through her outdoor kennel, constantly barking and carrying on, and she did the same thing in her crate in the house.  But I loved her.

Belle was as stubborn as a mule!  She knew all the same commands as the other dogs.....she just chose to ignore them most of the time!  She turned out to be gun shy so we couldn't use her for hunting. There were times when I swore she was part Greyhound!  When she got out of the yard we never really caught her, we followed her in cars and on foot trying to catch her but this dog "quartered" a mile.  (Quartering is the pattern most hunting dogs use when going through a field looking for birds, it's usually about a hundred yards one direction then a hundred yards the other.)  We would eventually wind up at home and wait and after a 2 hour run, Belle would come up on the front porch and be ready to come inside and sit on the couch.  So aggravating, but I loved her.

 She didn't like strangers, adults or kids and would snap when people put their fingers in her kennel to say hi, except us, she would snuggle on the couch with us and she loved to give kisses.  But she didn't want any other dogs around when it was "her" time.  She snapped at my kids a few times too.  But I couldn't get rid of her.  My husband suggested a few times that we should find another home for her but I always said "No," because I loved her.

I swore Belle would end up living till she was 25 just because she was a pain in the butt!  But that didn't happen.  Belle turned 13 on June 13th of this year.  She still had to be let outside by herself.  She was the first dog out every morning and would "help" with the food and water dishes in all the kennels, do her business then wait in her kennel till her door was closed.  She had slowed down some, but she could still race like the wind when she saw a cat she wanted to chase!  She developed a huge cyst on her hind thigh but the vet said leave it, she wasn't in any pain from it and we didn't believe it was cancerous.  The last few mornings Belle didn't run outside she walked....and she didn't want to stay outside in the evenings to run around, she wanted to come in and go to her crate.  When my husband mentioned it to me last night I went outside to watch her and check her over.  She didn't even want to leave her dog house or her kennel but he coaxed her out.  As I watched her move around the yard I knew it was time....I could see she was very weak, and appeared to be in pain.  But I still loved her.

So this morning I called and made her appointment.  I had to carry her out of her crate to the car and into the vet.  The vet checked her over and told me I had made the right decision.  I was there when she was born and I was there when she died.  I loved her!

I hope and pray the Rainbow Bridge is real and I will get to see all of the pets I've had over the years when I die.  I wasn't there when everyone of them was born but I was with almost everyone of them when they died.  There will be soooo many of them but I will remember each and everyone of them when I see them.  Ashes, Tiger, Sylvester, Tiny, Willie, Shadow, Kodiak, Darrell, Playboy, Yetta, Cookie, Rocket, Patches, Bonnie, Charlie, Sis......there are more, that's just a few.....I hope they will welcome Belle and she will be a bit nicer in that beautiful valley on the other side of the bridge and run and play with all of her old friends.....because I loved her!