What is it?

Let me start this post off by saying that I love my dog. I wouldn't give her up for any other dog.
That being said, let's begin.

It was the first weekend of the month, February to be exact. Those who know East Texas know this weekend as one thing, "Canton." There is never any other reason to go to Canton except for first Monday weekend where they have their GINORMOUS trade days going on. So if you ever hear someone saying, "I'm going to Canton," you can be sure they are not going to visit, they are not going to Splash Kingdom Water Park (the largest water park in East Texas), and they are not going because they found a nice vacation on hotels.com. They are going to spend all day walking many miles rummaging through the world's largest swap meet.

It was myself, Kacie, and her parents on this adventure, and we had one purpose in mind - to get a puppy! (and to buy something from the antique shop where we had a gift card, but that's beside the point) When we arrived in Canton we headed off to the area down the hill called "dogtown." Basically this is the world's largest dog swap meet. We searched through every store, every booth, and looked in every crate to find the puppy that was "the one." After much time and many conversations of, "it will call out our name when we see it and we'll just know," we found it. A cute little black, white, and tan puppy called out our name. She was a puppy like no other puppy in Canton. We didn't recognize the breed when we saw her, she was just so darn cute and not too expensive. A few minutes went by while we were standing over the crate holding the little black pup talking to the owner. The conversation went something like this...

jonathan: "how old is she?"
owner (let's call her Gertrude): "7 weeks"
jonathan: "how many siblings does she have?"
gertrude: "3"
jonathan: "does she have any problems?"
gertrude: "no."
jonathan: "did her parents have any problems?"
gertrude: "no."
jonathan: "what kind of dog is she?"
gertrude: "a Norwegian terrier Maltese mix"
jonathan: "oh that's interesting, i've never heard of that"
gertrude: "my daughter has one and she is the best dog ever"
jonathan: "oh really, what do you like about this mix so much?"
gertrude: "oh... I just love it. I love dogs. Their cute."
jonathan: "We'll take it!"

So, I handed her the cash, she gave me her shot records and we were on our way. She was so cute, so soft, so quiet, so nice, and just an adorable puppy. (it was at this point when we named her Bella) After talking about Bella's unique breed for a while with my inlaws, I had a revelation. "There is no such thing as a Norwegian Terrier, there is a Norwich terrier but not Norwegian. That owner must have said 'Norwich' and we all just heard 'Norwegian'."
So it was solved. We got the cutest little puppy in the world. She was a Norwich Terrier Maltese Mix.

Here's what she looked like:




















I think all of you could agree. Bella was a cute dog!



Months have past now. Months of taking Bella to the vet, the girls oooing and awwwing over her, and absolutely no one having ever heard of a Norwich Terrier Maltese mix. The vet told us, "uh... I don't think she's got any Maltese in her, definitely some kind of terrier, maybe Norwich." I was convinced however that I could find a picture on the internet of a dog that looks just like Bella. I've spent hours and hours on Google Images trying to find this. I can't find a sing dog in the world that is a Norwich Maltese. Weird! Well, at least she's cute.

I had a new revelation. It happened yesterday. I was cleaning my desk at home and I opened up the envelope with Bella's shot records that Gertrude had given us. My eyes caught something weird, again! Gertrude had written "Malteses" as the breed.... TWICE! Now I'm no vet but I do know that a pure white toy dog with long hair is called a Maltese and not a Malteses. Something fishy is going on here. If I were to go by what Gertrude said in Canton combined with what the shot record said Bella would be a Norwegian Terrier/Malteses. Now that is an interesting breed.

So I am now convinced that our dog Bella is NOT what we thought she was in the beginning. In fact she doesn't look like she looked or look like we thought she would look. She has grown a beard, a mustache, a very large unibrow, and has ears like DUMBO! Oh yeah, and Gertrude had no idea of what she was talking about.

Please help! If you know what kind of dog this is I WANT TO KNOW!

Here's the most recent picture of her, in fact I took it 20 min ago.




















And if you say, oh she looks the same.... here you go: