Bella on a cold morning

The wind was blowing her ears! Doesn't she look well! She is big and strong and kind. She is still scared by silly things--like the reeds rustling in the wind, or going through the front door--but so much better than she was a year or so ago.

Recently, someone on Long Island was arrested for starving a Great Dane to death. How can you do that? They are the size of a woman or a teenage boy. Bella now weighs about 145 pounds... and she weighed only 105 lbs when she arrived here. This is Bella, a couple of days after she came to live here in March 2009. It made me cry when I saw this picture of her again. How could anyone have not noticed how hungry she was???

She still sometimes sleeps all folded-up or wrapped into a tiny ball, like a kitten, and with her paws folded right back against her dog-wrists. But mostly she sprawls. All over her favourite sofa. All over me.