Meet Bella

follow the pups on Instagram! @b.b.gsd

You know how sometimes life throws things your way and you pause and look back and know that you couldn’t have planned that any better if you tried? That’s what happened when we came home with Bella, Bear’s new little sister and the second GSD in our pack.

Y’all have no idea how many times I took this photo. One or the other (or both) would be looking away, they’d hop off the chairs because they would think they’d been released, buh! Two hyper GSDs is no joke.

We’ve had Bear almost two years now, which is hard to believe! Looking back on pictures from when we adopted him, the contrast between his puppy self and his adult-ness now is kind of astonishing. I started to get puppy fever again! We started looking for a second dog to run our crazy big yard with Bear.

The first place we looked was back with the rescue where we found him. We even met another puppy (8mo male). Sadly, Bear wasn’t really having any of it. The other puppy was fine, but Bear kept snapping and growling. Doesn’t exactly bode well for the car ride home, let alone a permanent addition. We spoke with the rescue people, and they thought it might’ve been that they had similar temperaments and would fight for dominance. Personally, I don’t think Bear was sold on the whole sibling thing in the first place.

Unfortunately, not long after that, the rescue had to cease operations. The woman running it got sick, so we get it. Sadly, that didn’t leave us many options for finding another GSD. We stopped looking.

Out of the blue, our trainer texted us. He remembered from previous conversations that we wanted a second GSD, and he happened to know of one. It was a 2 year old female that he had trained several months ago, but her first family couldn’t take care of her (medical issues strike again). They gave her to our trainer to foster, and he reached out to us.

We board Bear with his trainer whenever we leave town for vacation, and he happened to be fostering Bella that weekend also. They had approximately 2 days together of pure play and bonding, under our trainer’s watchful eye. When we picked up Bear, we picked up Bella too <3

After a weekend with their trainer running around like nuts, they are bffs! Well, until they realize they’re now siblings, lol

She’s smaller than Bear (~60lbs to his ~80lbs), and much less charge-headlong-into-the-fray than he is. That’s not to say she’s timid! We’ve had her almost a week, and she’s certainly figured out how to tell Bear to back off! She loves fetch, so I’m hoping she’ll teach her brother how that works. She also loves running – she’ll get Bear to chase her, which he LOVES – but she doesn’t have quite the endurance he does. Yet. We’re trying to teach her not to jump on the bed at 5am, so that’s a work in progress! Since she’s already been trained, we’ve been walking them together in the mornings. They do well heeling separately (1 dog per parent) or heeling stacked to one person. Overall, Bella has started adjusting quite nicely, and we’re glad to have her home!

This is probably the most impressive trick so far – they’re both heeling, to me, just stacked!

Alright, enough chatter. I’ll include more pictures now 🙂 Meanwhile, excuse me while I clean my house. My two sheps are apparently water dogs, so they LOVE all this rain we’ve gotten lately. Which means mud!

Forever cleaning dog hair, but loving the two monsters from which it came,
Aiden

Oh! And if you followed Bear on Insta, we changed the handle to include Bella too 🙂 See above!

Tugging with big brother!
Making herself at home
Trip to Petsmart to get new ID tags – Bella needed one, and Bear’s was faded and scratched beyond all recognition, so he did too. They did so well! We got several compliments on their good behavior, and they both got treats from the cashier.
She’s already stealing his spots…. She’s little and can wriggle in faster than he realizes what’s going on!
“Uhh, guys? It’s time to go for our morning walk!”
She’s so photogenic, when she sits still long enough to snap one!

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One reply to “Meet Bella”

  1. […] #2: I’m still that dog mom. We adopted Bella, and we changed Bear’s Instagram handle to include her! @b.b.gsd Edit: I’m that dog […]

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