Heading into Christmas Lexi was in her prime saying she wanted everything she saw a commercial for on TV. Then she went and saw Santa with her Grandma, I believe. Afterwards, Grandma asked Lexi what she had asked Santa for. Lexi broke out in tears, crying and mumbling, “I want a real dog.”
Of course I heard this story and it absolutely broke my heart. At the same time, however, it also made me cringe. I mean a dog? Really? I was absolutely convinced that us getting Lexi a dog would be like the very worst of every Hollywood movie about getting your child a dog for Christmas. Well Dawn and I talked about it at length and we finally decided to pull the trigger on Lexi’s “Real Dog”.
We went to several different web-sites trying to find a breed of dog that would best match our lifestyle. After much searching and debating we finally agreed upon a Shiba Inu. With the breed picked we turned our attention to actually getting a puppy for Lexi.
Once again we turned to the trusty internet to locate a reasonable Shiba breeder. There were a couple locally, but none of them had any puppies, or older dogs, available. We expanded our search and finally located a breeder. We contacted the breeder and before we knew it everything had been arranged for our new family member to be flown to Vegas.
As things worked out the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Dawn took Lexi down to California to spend a few weeks for Christmas vacation on the same Friday that our new puppy would be arriving. So while Dawn and Lexi were on the road to California, I was at the airport waiting for our new family member to show up. Thankfully the wait wasn’t too long and I was quickly on the way home with our little baby girl.
Dawn returned on Sunday after dropping off Lexi and we got the chance to spend some quality time with our new girl to give her a chance to get used to the house and us. We were allowed a couple days with her before the trip to California for Christmas with Grandma. The plan was to have Dawn and I drive down on Christmas Eve, arriving later in the evening after Lexi had already gone to bed. This would give us the change to surprise Lexi the next morning.
Come Christmas morning we all got up and started to go through all the different gifts in normal fashion, making sure to save the best for last. Once Lexi had gone through all her gifts we pointed out one last one she had “missed”. She opened it up and found a small, pink dog collar inside it with a name tag on it. We asked her what it was and at first she seemed kinda confused. We had to ask her what this collar was for and she had thought it was for one of her stuffed puppies. We told her to go start looking while we brought in her new puppy from out in the garage where she had been waiting. She was absolutely beside herself, so excited that Santa had brought her a puppy just like she had asked for. It was really great. Lexi put the collar on and we told Lexi her new puppy’s name, Sasha.
Here is a picture of the pair taken a couple days later.
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