Maryonna Brown held Gozo the dog in her arms at her mother’s residence outside Hamlet Monday night, and Gozo was squirming, trying to get turned around to lick her face.

“She’s my big baby,” she said. “She always wants me to hold her in my arms.”

Maryonna Brown’s struggle with leukemia continues, though she seems to be on the uptick, and is delighted with the dog that the Make-A-Wish Foundation gave her, even if they didn’t get the breed exactly right.

“I just wanted a Yorkie,” Maryonna said. “She’s not a Yorkie.”

“She’s a Morkie,” her mother, Sheneeka, said.

“Yeah,” Maryonna said, putting the dog down and crawling into her lap.

Sheneeka explained that Maryonna had never seen a Yorkie dog. “She just heard me talking about little dogs, and that’s what she wanted,” she said.

Gozo is a cross between a Maltese and a Yorkshire Terrier - a Morkie.

She is five years old, about a foot tall, and has gray and black medium length hair. Her last owner, who named her Gozo, succumbed to cancer about a year ago.

“The woman’s husband said he couldn’t keep her, so he gave her to the Make-A-Wish people, with all her stuff,” Sheneeka said. “Now she’s here with us.”

Gozo was used to laying beside the ill woman, Sheneeka explained, which made her ideal as a companion for Maryonna.

Maryonna said that she even sleeps with Gozo, as she pulled out the large stuffed animal that was the dog’s toy while she was with her last owner.

“She loves this thing,” Maryonna explained, shaking the toy as Gozo jumped up and down biting it.

Gozo pulled it to the floor and crawled on top of it, nipping at and shaking it.

“I think the dog is so cute,” Maryonna’s older sister Leshea said. “She’s so loving.”

“She really loves treats,” Maryonna clarified. “Every single day she’s just barking for treats. You give her one, then she barks for another one.”

Older sister Chasdidy said that Gozo is part of the family. “She likes to kiss people on the mouth, though, and we don’t allow that.”

“She tries to kiss you on the cheek, on the face, every way she can,” Maryonna picked up. “She even tries to kiss me on my hands and on my arms.”

Maryonna picked the dog back up, pointing to her tag. “What does that say?”

It was the dog’s name and return address.

“Oh, this one,” she pointed to a pink heart.

Her mother said it aloud. “I am a Make-A-Wish dog. Please return me if found. We made that for her.”

Sheneeka explained that Maryonna will be undergoing another round of chemotherapy shortly. Her medications include steroids, which make her hungry.

“I couldn’t get her to eat hardly anything,” she said. “Now she’s eating up everything.”

“I eat so much everybody has to rub my belly,” Maryonna said.

“You’re getting about that way right now,” Sheneeka said, rubbing her daughter’s stomach.

She said that they are hoping that her hair won’t fall back out with the next round of chemo as she fondled Maryonna’s loose, black curls. “But we’ll be all right either way,” she said.

Maryonna is still expecting a visit from Make-A-Wish soon, when she will get to make the other half of her wish, a trip to Disneyland.