All About My Dog Belle

The new bookstore sits between a quick loan company and the best Chinese buffet in the small southern town of 2,380 people. I recommend the hot and sour soup with crisp fried noodles. I know it is the most okay buffet because I eat there when I wish to splurge.

The owner of the bookstore reminds me of a principal in Riverside, Ca. that we worked with for over two decades. Soft-spoken and genuine in affection for kids and life, the principal and owner understand the importance of teaching.

Ostensibly, Jannette, my daughter adopted, and I were to attend a reading of books children had authored about a topic of interest. Only one new author appeared between soccer games and the local Black Patch Tobacco Festival.

Upon entering any place, I am always quick to observe entrances, exits, and people. The man wearing a Freedom T-shirt with a long-haired dachshund in his lap got my attention immediately.

The expression on the man’s face and the attention he paid the dog were intense. I know that intensity and have often worn that same look since September 1987.

The countenance is a mixture of love, affection, and sadness of history’s past.

Sitting in front of him in a chair was a young girl, ten years of age; she would attest in tan shorts, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with a large red heart announcing love and happiness, and large horn rim glasses framing deep brown eyes and a beguiling yet shy smile.   

In my mind, this was my daughter Sirah Ilyana. Or, at best, how I pictured her in my imagination at the same tender age. Her Dad, a protective parent feeling somewhat awkward, cradled and cooed to the subject of her book All About My Dog Belle.

Belle now and then snuffled and eeked a bark, always being shooshed and loved on by a father who had experienced a deep pain of some kind, an unfathomable wound, my instincts told me.

Later, I would overhear some of the explanation for the pained expression. As with me, it was the loss of a child and how a dog, God’s dyslexic creation provided salvation. Belle, the subject of his daughter’s book, came onto the scene weeks after the tragedy.

The young girl’s Dad approached the chair on stage where his daughter sat to read her first published book and took up sentry. With a strong voice and a lilt of story-telling that suits a decade old, we learned that Belle was a three-year-old dog that weighed about 14-pounds and that she is a “Little Diva” who enjoys her stuffed miniature horse.

As she turned each page of her book, a photo expressed her carefully handwritten sentiments.

We come to know Belle is very spoiled and has “more toys” than the author and, following every bath, engages in the house run of “zoomies.”

However, Belle loves her stuffed “Lamb Chop” the most and has five of them, some even bigger than she is. Mom buys her many toys, and she likes to play “rough” with Daddy.

With each turn of the page, the daughter’s voice grows more robust, and the adoring look of her Daddy strengthens.

We learn in the ending chapter that she sleeps with Mom and Dad and “completes our family.”

I bought an autographed copy of her book All About My Dog Belle and took my picture with the young author. I am sharing that book with our friends Fredrick and Penelope, who tragically lost their angel recently.

In 1996, I came to understand how a dog can save a life; it was mine.

Since then, we have had three dogs that have passed over the Rainbow Bridge. With each, our hearts sadden, yet their presence, even as short as it might be, reaffirms that dogs are God’s “Angels without Wings.”

The 2008 art project our beloved Penelope helped me with that captured our angels is now a gift to this young author.

I expect to read many more of her books. Like Sirah Ilyana would have, she will bring a smile to everyone she meets and will teach a lesson with every book she writes.