At 5:10 this afternoon after a long battle with cancer, Miss Bella Rose went to Heaven and she is now running with Sam and the other Therapy Pals we lost this year. Ed wrote me this afternoon those words. He said she was running with Sam and Sam is the boss. That may be true but I guarantee Miss Bella Rose is making everyone laugh with her antics!

Miss Bella Rose was a beautiful American Golden Retriever who loved to dress in all sorts of dresses and bling for different occasions. She loved to go to the Dog Gone Fun night at UBH. Every class has its clown and our clown was Bella Rose. She would start to run the little jump course we had set up and would make it through about a fourth of it and run to see a patient. She would resume running the course and leave again to search handlers bags against the wall. She would find a ball or some toy and proudly come to Ed to show her prize. Young and old laughed and laughed at her smiling face as she did her antics. She was a delight, to say the least. Bella Rose always went to the State Special Olympics in Arlington once again serving kids. She loved greeting the athletes once they finished. Bella Rose was very versatile with her therapy as she loved going regularly to Good Samaritan Nursing Home, Frisco library reading visits as well as school visits.  She did all visits with love. She always attended the Therapy Pal classes to help teach “paws up” at a bedside. She met the prospective Therapy Pals in class and communicated in her elegance the importance of the job.

Bella Rose became a Therapy Pal on June 26, 2010. She made over four hundred visits by January of 2017. She continued making visits until COVID-19 shut us down in March of this year. I am sure she missed her work as it stopped so suddenly. I am sure before she stopped visiting, she had made at least another couple of hundred visits the past three years.

Anyone who met or knew Miss Bella Rose would not forget her. She was calm, elegant, and full of love with a spark of mischief. She loved her little bossman, Sam, and had his back for sure. I know Sam has quite a therapy membership in Heaven and I bet they are working helping in ways we don’t know. Bella Rose, you did a fantastic job on earth! You will be missed as you left a big hole in our hearts. You will always bring a smile with your memories and that is saying a whole lot!