My first experience with having a pet was when I was in elementary school. My parents had conceded defeat to my siblings and my constant nagging for a pet and they bought two goldfish.

  The goldfish survived for all of two days, not even having a chance to be named. Thus I have remembered them as NoName Fish 1 and NoName Fish 2.

  After that harrowing experience, my siblings and I changed our pleas from ‘we want a pet’ to ‘we want a dog’.

  Four years later, on Dec. 24, my dad walked into our front foyer covered in snow holding the most precious puppy to have ever existed. He was a puggle who was one and a half years old and had the biggest brown eyes.

  We had had him for a few days before finally reaching a decision on his name, Biscuit. A name which is often replaced with the nicknames he has received throughout the years such as Little Nugget or just Nug and B.

  A puggle, who had been abandoned by his first owners and left in a shelter, was finally able to find his family. Nine years later after surviving eating two sticks of butter, multiple pieces of Nutella toast, one smores cake, multiple batches of chocolate chip cookies, cranberry bread, all the tomatoes in our garden, at least two blankets, and much much more Biscuit had grown not only in size, but he had also become the most important and uniting force in my family.

  If mom was ever angry with you for something, just hand her Biscuit and while she is preoccupied with fawning over him you leave.

 If your siblings were being annoying while you were trying to watch your show, you could remind them to be quiet solely based on the fact that Biscuit was trying to sleep.

  Regardless of what the situation was Biscuit could get you out of it by just being his cute little self.

  However, there was one thing that Biscuit does which he cannot escape by just being cute, and that is being punished when he runs away.

  A daily routine for almost all of the years we have had him, Biscuit rings the jingle bell hanging from our back door – signalling he wants to go outside-, then we put his electric collar on, a couple minutes later we get a call from a neighbor about Biscuit wandering around the neighborhood, then we find him, bring him home, put him in his crate and repeat the whole thing all over again the next day.

  After years of this, it begs the question of why? Why does our dog feel the need to take himself on walks after going on runs daily with my dad? Why does he like to visit other neighborhoods or even go to Weller Park each time he goes outside?

  The answer, he wants a friend.

  Everyone is out of the house most of the day because of school or work and with all that time stuck in the house our little puppy was feeling lonely. Thus once again my sibling and I took up arms to convince our parents that we needed another dog.

  After asking and asking and asking and even trying to convince my mom that she needed another dog so that she would not feel lonely when she sent her first child off to college, we had reached a stalemate.

  Then, at the end of our 2016 summer break my sister Sarita receive a text from my dad. However, it was not just a text but a picture of a small puggle at an animal shelter.

  The second my father came home my sisters and I descended on him trying to figure out the location of the puggle, a location which he refused to disclose. My dad had had this habit of going to animal shelters all the time so between my sisters and I we could not figure out which one he had visited wherein he spotted the puggle.

  So, we took to the internet and deduced that our father would not have gone out of his way to go to a shelter and thus the dog had to be at a shelter between here and where my dad works – here and Dayton. We had to look at the websites of seven different animal shelters, scrolling through pictures upon pictures of dogs to see if any looked like the one our dad had sent Sarita.

  So we did.

  After a couple hours of searching, we finally found a female puggle within the deduced location constraints. My siblings and I did not wait, we got into the car and drove to the shelter with the intention or taking her home that day.

  When we arrived at the shelter and I saw her for the first time my heart melted. It took me back to the first time I saw Biscuit. Those giant eyes, her cute little snout, her little tail which vigorously wagged back and forth. She had been adopted and returned three times already and the shelter attendant was extremely hesitant about letting her be adopted before she met our entire family – including Biscuit.

   So the next day we brought our parents and brother in and a few days later our newest family member, Honey Bear, got to come home.

   Let us just say, it was a huge adjustment. She was barely a year old and constantly raced around the house, attempting to play with everyone. She loved to leap in the air and her first couple days at the house her favorite thing to do was chase a red laser.

   After a couple days, Biscuit was no longer annoyed at the new puppy who had messed up his sleeping schedule but rather enjoyed her company, often playing with her despite being tired and letting her sleep next to him, despite his original frustration with her.

   There is something magical about bringing a new member into you family. There is something about the first time you see them, the first time you play with them, the first time you hold them. It is a feeling which never goes away and the bonds you form with them are irreplaceable and unbreakable and it is the feeling I get every time I see my puppies.