Personal Narrative: A New Dog Saved My Life

1733 Words4 Pages

I remember a time when a new dog saved my life. I was about eleven or twelve years old, and as an illegal immigrant I was having trouble finding friends, the fact that I was new at the elementary school I attended didn’t do much to help my popularity. I was starting to get obsessed with video games. The one guy that my brother and i hung out with happend to have an old gameboy he didn’t use, and he let me borrow it. It had quite a few games on it, but the one I fixated on was the Red version of the new pokemon game. I recall spending hours upon hours of my day sitting in the couch trying to figure out how to beat the next trainer, or the next pokemon. Coming from a country where all we had to do was go outside and play with our friends, my …show more content…

I’m sure my parents expected for me jubilant, I had wanted a dog my entire life after all. Even now, when I think back on it, I’m not really sure why I wasn’t all that excited. I’m not sure if I was just that depressed, or if it had something to do with the fact that I had already been let down so much when it came to pets, but I remember that at first, I couldn’t even be bothered to put the gameboy down. My brother, of course, was beside himself, and although Nina herself was a little timid at first, it didn’t take her long to get used to her new family and surroundings.It must have taken her a couple of days to knock down all my walls and win me over. I’m not sure exactly how or when it happened, but eventually, interacting and growing up with that little dog gave me the strength to pull myself out of the hole I was in, and make an effort to assimilate into this new culture that was giving me so much problems. I’m not sure if it was the fact that after Nina arrived in my life, I always felt like I had an unconditional friend waiting for me at home, or if it was just the fact that I would come home and actually play outside with my dog instead of shutting myself inside all day. Maybe it was just the unconditional love and companionship that dogs offer us. All I know is that only a couple of days after Nina arrived, I put down the gameboy and didn’t pick it up again until I was well on my way to becoming an athlete, which is the other big influence on my life. I don’t doubt that if I had never met Nina, I would be in much uglier, much darker place

Open Document