I slung open our car door as fast as possible and sprinted down to the entrance of the rescue shelter. “There she is!”, I cried as my eyes fell onto the white and black mutt.

“Wait for me!”, my brother called in the distance as he caught up to me. I was panting like the happy dog in front of me as I finally reached the front of the shelter. My eyes were wide with excitement.

More than seven years have passed by since I’ve had my pet dog, Reina. When I was younger, I always wanted to have a golden retriever as a pet. I begged and begged my parents, asking them when I could get a puppy. After waiting for what seemed an eternity, I was finally promised to get a pet dog on my eighth, and golden birthday.

Reina is white with black spots, almost like a Dalmatian. When we got her, we didn’t know exactly what kind of breed she was. We brought her to a vet to have her blood tested and the results indicated that Reina was part English Cocker Spaniel, English Springer Spaniel, and Shih Tzu. As a result, she’s around the size of a Spaniel and has the distinct curled tail of a Shih Tzu.

Reina also has black floppy ears and a large solid black marking connecting them on the top of her head. Because of this, we like to joke around that she’s always wearing a wig. Overall, she is very elegant and attention-grabbing, so we can expect many people to stop and ask what type of dog she is – especially in crowed areas such as fairs.

I was living in Virginia when we got our dog, Reina. In school, my friends and classmates talked about their pets often. Yet, I couldn’t join in with them since the only pets I had were a couple of fish and an old rabbit. However, I really wanted either a cat or dog. My parents told me that having a dog was expensive and can be hard work, so they wanted for me to wait a little longer before they thought I was old enough to take some responsibility. So, when the time finally came, my mom and I browsed through a website that listed all the available dogs near our town. We only viewed ones that were kept in rescue shelters rather than ones in a pet store because we thought that it was the right thing to do.

It took a while for us to pick out the ones we liked the best. Each of the dogs had a description when you clicked on them, listing how old they are, how much they cost, etc. We narrowed the list to the top three dogs my brother and I wanted the most. Out of the three, we picked a female mutt. We later found out her name, Reina, means “queen” in Spanish.

My mom told me I had to wait a couple of days before we could get her. I actually had to wait until after my birthday before we went to go drive down to the rescue shelter. When we arrived, I was met with a large tan building with many dogs spread out alongside the front doors. I brushed past a horde of dogs as I rapidly made my way down to where Reina stood. My brother was following closely behind me.

Reina had a dog care worker to take care of her before someone were to buy her. As my mom caught up to my brother and I, the tall woman, holding Reina back on a leash, smiled and introduced herself. The lady told us that Reina was found with her collar still on and was casually wandering around outside of the animal shelter one day. When one of the workers saw her, they brought her inside right away and took care of her to make sure she was healthy. The shelter tried to contact the owners in every way they could, but they never came to pick her up.
As my mom and her were having a conversation, I glanced at Reina and realized she looked quite different than she did on the website. This was probably due to the website not having the highest quality photos in the world. Reina was much skinnier than she is today, but she was just as excited to see new people, such as the 8-year-old me. She was wagging her tail quickly back and forth like the propeller of a helicopter and was struggling to get close enough to smell us. I think Reina was actually more excited to see me than I was to see her.

When we finally got to have ownership over Reina, we brought her to our house and let her get used to everything. To keep memories of this moment, we took pictures of us sitting on the stairs and Reina right by our sides. But before I could get too trigger-happy on trying to teach her any new tricks, my mom pulled out a book on dog behavior. Because our mom had a dog when she was a kid, she knew everything that she was talking about. She informed us on how to properly treat a dog and how dogs think differently compared to humans.
After I learned everything there was to know, we tested what commands she knew. Reina’s old owners must have not have taught her many tricks, because we tested everything a normal dog should know and she only knew simple commands like sit and come. When we did eventually get to training her, we had to prompt her using treats. This probably wasn’t the best thing to do, since she gained a lot of weight and relied on treats to do tricks from then on.

Overall, Reina is a really lazy, but nice dog. When she does get into action though, it is almost always memorable. For example, one Easter we had a giant chocolate bunny lying out on one of our kitchen tables. When I woke up the next day, I saw that the chocolate bunny was missing and the wrapper was torn to shreds on the floor. Reina had a bad scolding afterwards.

Even though it’s not uncommon for a dog to try to eat chocolate, Reina just generally has a strange appetite and will basically eat anything that she can get a hold of. Once, she ate a whole stick of butter. I don’t know how she does these things, but she constantly finds a way.

As the years gradually went by I changed to a new school, and Reina also changed as well. Reina’s had a lot of struggles she’s had to overcome recently. Not too long ago, she somehow got a small hole in one of her intestines. She became really sick and skinny since some food wasn’t getting fully digested. We took her to the vet to give her surgery and medicine and she got better in no time. But Reina got into trouble again. A couple of days ago, Reina got a skin infection due to an allergic reaction. We’re not sure what from, but my mother thinks it’s from a certain type of food brand we are giving her. Right now we are feeding her special food in limited portions each day in the hopes of getting rid of her skin rashes.

Even though Reina has had some issues, we will never stop loving our irreplaceable dog. Although Reina is left alone for most of the day, due to my brother and I being in school and our mom at work, she still has some other animals for company. Not too long after we moved to Wisconsin, we got two tortoiseshell cats. Hey, at least it’s something to keep her awake.