The Vallecillo’s

Tinker Belle Star, a.k.a Belle.

Yesterday was a very sad day around here. Earlier during the week I noticed how large our dog Belle’s tumor had grown, so we made an appointment with the vet to take a look at it; the same vet that removed her tumor almost 2 years ago.

At 13 years old, Belle was no spring-chicken. For the past few weeks we had been noticing her struggle making the step-up transition from the backyard to the house, back pain problems (very common in Beagles), increased vomiting, coughing, and hearing loss. We shared this information with the vet, and Mandi shared her concerns about Belle’s quality of life. The last thing she wanted was to see her dog suffer, and simply keeping things the way they are by pumping Belle with medication was not going to make things any better for anyone.

We have gone through a lot this week and for certain something like this was the last thing we needed. I was resistant to making a decision at that point since I didn’t think any of us were in a good place to make sound and rational decisions, but Mandi felt strongly about not putting Belle through any more grief and/or pain. I didn’t make things any easier for Mandi by questioning her decision over and over again, but it was very important to me to make absolutely certain this decision was not simply emotional, but rational as well. Belle was Mandi’s dog, so it would ultimately be her decision anyway.

Belle was put down to sleep on 2/15/08 at about 6 pm, and she will be deeply missed. I’m the first one to admit she was the dog I loved to hate, but she was a good dog. Make no mistake, she was a huge brat…but she was a very loving dog. I always told Belle she couldn’t be both cute and smart (I tell Mandi the same, but that is a whole other story), and she was definitely very cute. Yes, I shared some choice words with that dog every single morning when she would wake me up with her barking between 5 and 5:30 a.m. (even on the weekends!), and I would yell at her whenever she would try to snatch up food from the table, or made her way into the pantry and ripped open whichever bag she could get her snout in, or continuously barked at her box of doggie treats demanding one, or helped herself to a poo-poo platter (not the same as a pu-pu platter) when she was in the backyard, but even after all of that I’m still going to miss her terribly.

We are now down to one dog, Chispa. She is 12 years old, so it is only a matter of time before we have to go through this again. When that happens there is going to be a long period of time before we even talk about getting another pet.

After years of terrorizing the dogs, Larsen decides to take a day-off and be nice to post-op Belle. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he is doing what he can to nurse her back to health in order to ensure many more years of dog-terrorizing-action to come.

For the last few months we have been noticing a growing lump on Belle’s (our beagle) hip. After having a veterinary look at it we decided the best thing to do at this time is to surgically remove it. That day was today so Belle is a bit on the mellow side (thank God!) if at least for just a day. I’ll admit that Belle is a real pain in my rear, but seeing her this way almost makes me feel sorry for her

Unfortunately the lump that was removed is cancerous and will most likely come back within the next few months. We hope it doesn’t happen that quickly, but only time will tell.

I have to say though, Belle is one tough cookie. Even after just having surgery, and God only knows how many stitches, she is jumping out of the sofa and running outside like nothing happened. Oh wait…did I say tough? Darn it, I really meant dumb…I get those two words mixed up all the time!

Our Beagle Bell can either be at total and absolute brat (which turns out to be about 95% of the time), or very sweet and tolerant. Today larsen found a bag of clothespins (yes, we have clothespins and I don’t even know why we have them or where they came from) and decided that Belle would be an excellent subject for testing how strong of a grip they had.

I don’t know if Belle was just being sweet and loving to Larsen, too dumb to realize what was going on, or just too darn lazy to go through the effort of getting her butt up and moving somewhere else.

First I would like to point out that my actions were not spurred by love, but rather by duty. The beast, I mean Belle, is a dog put on this earth with the sole purpose of driving me absolutely crazy.

Now that we have cleared that up…today Belle’s toe-nail got tangled on her pillow as she descended from her 2nd floor suite (OK, a crate on top of a crate) successfully yanking the whole thing right out of its socket. As expected, bleeding ensued and I was obligated to come to the rescue in order to stop the bleeding. No, really…who wants blood all over their house. It had to be done, I had no choice, I was not happy, I was not pleased…really!