All dogs go to heaven...

Princess Gracie Belle was our St. Bernard, and she was born on Nov. 5, 1999. She's been gone for 6 years now and we miss her everyday.

We brought Gracie home when she was 6 weeks old, and she was a 10 lb. ball of fur. She started growing, and growing, and growing...


At 9 months, she was bigger than a lot of adult dogs. A big dog with the energy of a puppy. A very, very big puppy that drooled a lot.


By the time she was a couple of years old, she weighed 150 lbs. But she had no concept of her size. She would try to sit on our laps. No - there was no trying - she sat on our laps. Of course, she never noticed that she was taking up the entire couch - all she cared about was laying on one of us. She could do some serious damage just by wagging her tail. Which she did. Often. We had to keep everything off the end tables because her tail would just knock everything on the floor. Too bad I couldn't get her to do the dusting for me.

She thought that any food at her head level was hers. One time, I put a grilled cheese sandwich on the bed (this was a large king-sized bed that was almost at my waist level), and when I came back a minute later I didn't see it. I looked everywhere for it, thinking that maybe I had put it somewhere else. But then I saw her standing there looking at me and I realized that she had eaten the whole thing. Another time, she scarfed two pieces of pizza off the dining room table before you could say "pepperoni or cheese".


Now we have a 16X20 canvas portrait of her hanging in our foyer. It only seemed right to have her here in the new house (we moved about a year after she died) with us. We all have mementos of her - I keep her collar in my desk. She was a sweetheart.

Love you, Graciebelle - you were the best dog ever!!