We love our dog Beatrice, and she loves us too

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Spencer is shown here with Bea when she first was adopted at 1 year and today at age 5.

My dog Beatrice really is a boy’s best friend. She loves playing, cuddling, making friends and eating. She is sweet, silly, loyal, cute and an angel. We got Beatrice four and a half years ago from the Animal Friends of the Valley shelter in Wildomar.

A couple of months after our other dog, Daisy, sadly passed away from a tumor, we were just looking at all of the pictures on the shelter’s website when we saw Bea. We knew we had to go see her. We went to the shelter to look for her and, after going through all of the kennels but one, we thought she had gotten adopted. But when we opened the last door, there she was.

They took her out of her cage so we could play with her. I remember she had a little globe squeaky toy and she kept trying to crawl up on my mom’s lap. As we were leaving the shelter, the people there told us that she had been adopted about a month before and had been brought back.

A couple of weeks passed and one day my mom came to pick me up from school. When we got home and opened the front door, there was Bea. She jumped on me and kind of scared me. She was almost as tall as me when she had her paws on my shoulders. My mom had gone and adopted her while I was at school.

I showed her the house and she followed me around. She was only 1 year old at the time. Later that night, she was sleeping on the couch when my dad came home. She didn’t remember him and started barking at him. She was trying to protect us and I could tell she already felt a bond with us.

After a while she got used to us and felt comfortable. We started to realize that Bea was a lot like Daisy and was the perfect dog for us just like Daisy was. I came up with her full name, which is Mrs. Beatrice Magoos Daisy Patches Sophie Melbert Gertrudy Massicot. All of the names mean something besides the last two; I just kind of made them up.

After a year with her, we moved to Canyon Lake and she loved it here. She had friends on both sides of the fence that she played with and we took her on walks around the neighborhood. The backyard was really big and she loved running back and forth across it. She had a little nook in the bushes where she kept all of her toys and relaxed in the sun.

We had these closet doors that were also mirrors and she would just sit and stare at herself in the mirror. After another two years we had to move to a different house a few streets down in Canyon Lake and I could tell Bea missed the bigger backyard and her friends. We started taking her to the park by the East Gate and she loved it. She has friends to play with and we take her almost every weekend.

She is also very protective of us and thinks that she is really tough. If someone is just walking down the street when I am home alone with her, she starts barking like they are going to come hurt me. After they pass by, she just gets on my bed and goes to sleep as if she is saying, “My work is done.”

During the summer we always bond a lot because we spend so much time together, and whenever I go back to school she knows it is coming. It always takes her a while to get used to nobody being home with her during the day.

Bea is also very smart. She remembers certain words and, if you say them, she gets excited and cocks her head. Some of her vocabulary consists of: go get a toy, park, Daddy is home, chicken, peanut butter, walk, and treat. She loves going on walks in the morning before I go to school. Every time we come back from the store or somewhere she always expects a new toy or a present and she goes looking through all of the bags.

Beatrice is very sweet and she is my best friend. We always talk about how lucky we are to have her; and even if those people who brought her back couldn’t see how awesome she was, it turned out pretty well for us. When we first got her she was so deserving of a forever home and family and I am very proud that that is us. She knows we really care about her and will always be there for her. We all love her very much and she loves us too.