Bella's Love Story
I did not know what to do, but I continued to pray and to save any little bit of extra money I could. Then our vet contacted Ellie’s Rainy Day Fund, the answer to my prayers. Currently we are in the middle of testing to see what can be done for our girl. No matter how this all turns out, I could not be more grateful for the BLESSING of just simply having the hope that’s being provided by all of you who support Ellie’s Rainy Day Fund.
All I wanted in 2008 for my 40th birthday was a puppy!
It’d been a rough few years for both my husband and me. We’d lost both of our dads, his brother was murdered, and I was permanently disabled after being hit by a drunk driver. As a result of the accident, I lost my job and we ended up homeless for a brief time. Losing our home meant re homing our 2 dogs—one of the most heartbreaking things I’d ever done.
But after 3 years in a “no pets” apartment, we finally had a house where I could have my heart’s desire... a new dog.
So with me on crutches from another reparative surgery, and my husband running interference, we headed out on a puppy hunt two weeks before my birthday.
I had given up as we rounded the last turn at SICSA, and there she was! It was the very last cage, and my heart simply melted. She was a tiny (2 pound!) puppy with her little paws up on the cage door, just looking up at me with the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. She was just a little wire-haired mixed breed, what most would consider “nothing special,” but I knew she was destined to be my new best friend.
I decided to call her Bella , because to me she was the most beautiful dog ever, and Bella means “beautiful” in several languages.
Right from the start, Bella filled her “best friend” role to perfection. I suffer from tremendous depression and anxiety at times, and she is often the only thing that can draw me out. Every morning she lays her head down next to mine on my pillow for morning prayers. And when I just can't force myself to get up, she simply curls up against me and snuggles, as if to reassure me that no matter how alone I feel, someone is definitely there with me.
Bella is definitely one of those dogs that makes you glad you came home from wherever you may have gone. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been gone 20 minutes or all day, I am still greeted with the same excitement and the required “eye sniff.” I don’t know why she does it, but after jumping into my arms for her hugs and kisses, she has to stick her nose up under my glasses and sniff at least one of my eyes. At times I wonder if she’s checking for the scent of tears to see if she’s got to go set someone straight for upsetting her Mama.
When I first felt Bella’s “bump,” I immediately took her to the vet. Since they have to put a soft muzzle on her, they couldn’t feel it well and they chalked it up to a bug bite. Months went by, and I monitored “the bump” with a growing sense of dread and depression. She was reexamined and this time they said she had a mast cell, and now they used the word “tumor”. The specialist we consulted couldn’t give us a prognosis without doing surgery which would cost several thousand dollars that we just didn’t have. To add to this, 3 days later my husband was taken into emergency surgery and would be unable to work for several months, leaving us struggling even worse financially.
I did not know what to do, but I continued to pray and to save any little bit of extra money I could. Then our vet contacted Ellie’s Rainy Day Fund, the answer to my prayers. Currently we are in the middle of testing to see what can be done for our girl. No matter how this all turns out, I could not be more grateful for the BLESSING of just simply having the hope that’s being provided by all of you who support Ellie’s Rainy Day Fund.
