BETHEL — There is more to Gracie that meets the eye. As a St. Bernard, she’s bound to snag attention due to her coat size. At six months, she weighs 50 pounds, but when she is full grown she can grow to 130-140 pounds. However, the reason she stole Alex Norden’s heart has nothing to do with the normal attributes attributed with St. Bernards.

Gracie is the dog who stops and makes sure every single person in the family has caught up together on a hiking trip. If anyone is behind or has stopped, she waits for them. Things like this are just one of the ways Gracie shows she puts family first.

Once, Alex took the ski team at Gould Academy on a trip for a week to Oregon when Gracie was super young. Now, Alex had never had a dog before Gracie, this was her first dog. So when she got home late at night from the trip and found Gracie was still waiting up for her, excited that Alex was home, in that moment Alex knew Gracie was part of the family. As Alex is a family-oriented person, she was thrilled to find her dog was as well.

When she introduced Gracie to her family, who had grown up without a dog, her whole family embraced Gracie as part of the family.

Gracie is patient with manners and an understanding dog. To say the least, she is definitely part of the family.