Bella was named by my husband. I asked him to think of a name because I had named all of our other dogs and the kids had named the cats. The night I brought her home he wrote down 3-4 names on a piece of paper. When I saw the name Bella I knew that was the one. I hadn't been a Pet Talker for long but there was a post about a dog named Bella who was also a poodle and had been attacked by 2 or 3 large dogs and was paralyzed. I was riveted to that thread. That Bella eventually died. I couldn't believe my husband picked out that name because, although he knew about the sick little poodle on Pet Talk, I had never told him the name. Later on we found out from some Italian friends that Bella means beautiful in Italian and she certainly is.

Ripley was one of the other names on my husband's original list. I thought it sounded too masculine for a girl so I didn't even consider it, even though he reminded me that Ripley had been a woman character in the movie Alien. Anyway I tucked it aside in my mind in case I ever got a male dog because I really did like the name. It turns out that when Ripley came along he just looked like a Ripley to me!