Meet Belle

I've done a lot of things since February 23, but I don't think any of them can top the feeling I have after what I did on Saturday.

While I was in Pittsburg with one of my friends, we stopped and looked at some bulldog pups. They were awesome but not $900 worth of awesome.

Seriously, the guy selling them out of the back of his truck expected people to pull up and just happen to have 900 bucks to plop down?

I've been wanting a dog for a long, long time (I couldn't because I lived in an apartment). But I don't have that kind of money.

So we went to the Southeast Kansas Humane Society building. And we looked around at what must have been 50 dogs. Maybe 60. Big, little, young, old.

But the barking in the big dog area was distracting me. And those were a little bigger than what I was looking for.

On our way back though the little dog area, we noticed this mostly-white-with-some black rat terrier. She was alone. She was shy. And she had these big eyes that were just begging for attention. We didn't notice her going in because she was in the very first cage and as you enter the room, that cage was blocked by the door.

We walked up to her. I held out my hand. She nervously sniffed it.

The paper on her cage said her name was Belle. She was already spayed and house trained. She's a bit over three years old. We asked to see her.

There's an area where you can check out the dog; just you and the animal. You get used to each other. She was the right size and she seemed to be gentle. I picked her up and held her up to face level.

She licked my nose. That was it.

We took her up front and I said that this was the dog for me. She was born in a kennel, a full-blooded rat terrier. The breeder couldn't sell her and brought her to the humane society. She had already been adopted once, but those people didn't keep a good eye on her and the society got wind of it and took her back.

How could anyone not have loved this dog enough to take care of it?

Usually, there's a $35 fee but they waived it for me because they wanted to see Belle get a good home. She was a favorite of the people at the society and the man helping us admitted that they had spoiled her some.

"She's probably had a few too many cheeseburgers," he said.

For being in either a cage or a kennel for so long, she wasn't especially anxious to run around when we took her to the car. Maybe she didn't know she could. We put her in the back seat and headed home.

She sat on my friend's lap some. She sat on mine some. It wasn't that difficult to steer, actually. She went to the back a couple of times.

We got home and that was when she decided she wanted to explore. But she didn't run; she just kind of jogged. She saw a couple of other dogs in a back yard and stopped. I picked her up and walked her back.

She likes her belly rubbed. She likes to go outside and smell flowers. She took over a purple blanket to sleep on instead of using the dog bed I bought for her (I'll just use that to keep her toys in). She has only barked once in three days.

I wish I could have had a dog before now. But I wouldn't have Belle. Somehow, I seem to have lucked out and got the perfect dog. Little bits of her personality show more each day and they've all been good.

She can have all the cheeseburgers she wants.