Every year, shoppers crowd stores on Black Friday, voraciously clamoring to purchase discounted goods from their favorite retailers. On Black Friday 2010, my sisters and I, all impatient children, joined that mob focused on an unorthodox Black Friday purchase: a puppy.
Like many children without pets, my sisters and I (there we are in the photo above: from left to right, our dog Nikki, my sister Emily, my sister Sarah and I), begged our parents incessantly to get a dog. My parents loved dogs, and our extended family of dog groomers watch the National Dog Show every Thanksgiving. Naturally, our parents agreed to get us a dog on the condition that we collectively found the dog we wanted and agreed to help take care of him/her.
My sister Emily, a planner even in the fifth grade, researched every breed of dog and breeders (ethical ones, of course) in our area. By the end of the week, she compiled a binder of detailed information about local dogs and breeders. This impressed our parents, and we immediately began seeing puppies.
We met with breeder after breeder, falling in love with every puppy we met. However, there was always some issue that would arise, and we would reluctantly move on to the next dog.
Finally, we arrived at a farmhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and met a cavalier-mini poodle mix that stole our hearts instantly. She was the most well-behaved, polite puppy we had seen, and her big brown eyes were all the persuasion we needed. The entire family agreed: this dog was the one.
We arranged to come pick up the puppy, who we named Nikki, on the day after Thanksgiving: Black Friday. Nikki was all we could talk about on Thanksgiving, much to our extended family’s chagrin.
What did we say we were thankful for before our Thanksgiving meal? Nikki.
What did we say when we saw a poodle during NBC’s National Dog Show broadcast? We let everyone know Nikki was half mini poodle.
Truth be told, our extended family loathed any mention of Nikki by the end of the day, but our excitement was the special kind only seen in children getting their first puppy.
When we finally went to pick up Nikki, we could not contain ourselves. The hour-long car ride felt like a year-long journey. When we finally got there, we argued about who would get to hold her on the car ride home. That Black Friday became unforgettable because my entire family still adores Nikki, our timeless, loving canine, over a decade later.
As an intern at Vizion Group PR, I have the pleasure of writing about the National Dog Show Presented by Purina, the competition that elevated my family’s excitement about our dog, which will be aired on NBC on Thanksgiving Day. The Kennel Club of Philadelphia will host the show at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, November 18 and Sunday, November 19 (https://nds.nationaldogshow.com), where thousands of people and thousands of dogs will come together for an experience I expect to be as memorable as that Black Friday in 2010.
This is such a sweet story!