On a summer day of 2011 I had stepped off the bus clueless about what was going to happen. I walked in the garage, opened the kitchen door, and looked down, and there it was, a small black pomeranian. As my jaw dropped, I dropped to my knees and looked up at my great grandma standing above me. She was smiling from ear to ear as if she was The Grinch who stole Christmas. I was speechless as I tried to push the words out of my mouth. “Whose dog is this?” I asked. 

I remember the ten seconds it took her to answer felt more like ten thousand years. My great grandma slowly opened her mouth, removing the smile off her face. “Your dog,” she said gently.

I jumped to my feet, and all in one motion, I wrapped my arms around my grandma as she looked down at me. “Her name is princess,” she said.

I stayed silent smiling from ear to ear. ‘You are kidding me right?This has to be a dream,’ I thought to myself.
I was as happy as a kid in a candy shop. I sat my bookbag on the dining table and spent the afternoon lying the floor calling her name, throwing her a small tennis ball, and giving her treats. My father had not wanted me to have a dog. Whenever I would ask he would shake his head no. “I’d be stuck taking care of her,” he’d said. We have had more than enough conversations of why I wasn’t getting a dog until he was as red as a tomato in the face and yelling at me to stop. “You are bugging me, my answer is no I said,” he said.

I waited for my father to come home; I couldn’t wait to see his reaction. My father came through the kitchen door. He stopped in his tracks, and his jaw dropped. My great grandma came out of her room still smiling from ear to ear. She looked at my father. “I got her a dog,” she said.
My father looked at my great grandma shocked. “I see that,” he said.
I looked up at my father, “Her name is princess,” I said.

For the rest of that night, I played with my dog until it was time to go to bed. This is the day I received my first dog. My first dog was the best present I’ve ever received.