Happy "Gotcha" Day Bella

This post is a little overdue but a few weeks ago marks one year since we adopted our sweet dog, Bella.  And the only reason how I even remember the date (or month) of when we adopted her was looking back at my old blog posts (you can go here to read about our first week with her).  We really don't celebrate our dog's birthday or should I say "gotcha day" since she was already a year old when we got her but I do have some cute pictures of Bella and Cooper I wanted to share!  Here is a picture of the first time we brought Bella home

And here is Bella now

Justin and I both grew up with dogs so we were excited to adopt her after we bought our house.  She was already house trained which was a huge relief and overall a great dog.  She can get very hyper at times but I'm thinking she will slowly grow out of that the older she gets.  It's interesting the emotions you go through when having a dog and a baby. When we first got Bella, we loved her and thought she was perfect.  Then a few months before Cooper was born you start to get very nervous about how she will behave when the baby is here.  So nervous, in fact that we decided to take her to dog training.  Not sure how much it helped, but it at least made us feel better.

Then after Cooper was born, my Mama instinct kicked in and I told Justin if she even looks at Cooper in a weird way, she's gone!  But I must say, she has been SO good with Cooper.  She really is a smart dog and she knows he is a baby.  The first couple of months we had Cooper sleeping in our room with us and Bella was sleeping in her crate in our room too.  I think that was really good because she could see Cooper as part of our family and every time I had to wake up in the middle of the night to feed him, I would look over at Bella and she would just be looking at us.  She never got anxiety about hearing him cry (which I read some dogs do) and it's like it didn't even phase her one bit.  And let me say...Cooper LOVES Bella!  She really is his first best friend!

His face will just light up when Bella walks in the room...it cracks me up.  When Cooper first started to laugh, Bella was one of the first things that would make him laugh hard.

There are even times when Cooper gets a little fussy and I can just let Bella in the house and he immediately calms down and he smiles so big!

Even this morning Coop was sitting in his bumbo and every time Bella got close to him he would reach out so hard to try to pet her.  It was way cute.  He loves to pet her and touch her and Bella doesn't mind at all.  She is so sweet with him.

Here they are playing with their toys together.  If only they would both learn that their toys are NOT interchangeable.  I'm glad that they like to share, but really?  Gross!

Of course I am still careful with them together and I still don't leave Bella alone with Cooper.  Another thing that Bella loves about Cooper is...well, his spit up.  Cooper spits up so much that Bella is right there and wanting to clean it up when he spits up on the floor.  It sounds disgusting so we always tell her NO but sometimes I just don't even care.  Cooper just has to burp and Bella will come running hoping that he spit up.  Good grief!  She is a food driven dog for sure.

I don't know what it is about babies and dogs, but they are just way too cute together.  I'm pretty sure Bella and Cooper will be best buds one day.  I also think Bella will be extremely protective over Cooper. The way she is protective over Justin and I, I'm thinking it will be even more with him since she has been here since he's been born.  We are thankful for our little family :)