First, you must meet them—my adorable grand dog puppies. Here I am sitting quietly at my daughter’s on Christmas Day with the puppies on my lap.

But they are puppies, so they are usually frolicking or sleeping. And they don’t know me yet, so they greet me rambunctiously, and it feels like they’d rather explore me for dinner than whatever is in their bowls.

So while I was sitting, simply observing the family scene around me, one of the puppies unexpectedly gave me my first Christmas gift. Of course, dogs don’t know when they’re giving a gift, but the gift was a real blessing. You see, one of the puppies suddenly jumped up from the floor and landed on my arm. My forearm jumped in return and began vibrating as if a hammer was attacking my wrist.

Surely the dog couldn’t be doing that! I pushed her as hard as I gently could off my arm, so I could examine the status of my now quivering arm. As she slid off, I noticed the face of my watch. It was texting me, asking me if I was OK! Reflexively, I pressed Yes. Then it asked, “Did you fall?” I quickly indicated No. Thankfully, my arm finally stopped vibrating.

I was spooked. Why was my watch texting me? Had Big Brother followed me into the house?

Luckily, it didn’t take long to figure out that the dog’s forceful landing on my arm had activated the FALL feature on my Apple watch. I bought the watch several years ago for that feature, but it had never activated before. So now I know something I should have known from the beginning because I’d bought it for that reason.

Knowing now that the Fall feature works, quiets qualms I may have had about its eventual efficiency. What if I’m alone and fall for real? So that was gift number one—an Apple watch lesson I needed.

The second gift was two sided—partly good, partly not. While I was playing detective with my watch, the other puppy tried to slide into place next to me. Along the way, her paw grabbed at my arm. I’m older and older people easily get skin tears. A big self-inflicted one has just healed on my other arm. Well, the not good part was that the bright red blood scared my grand kids. They didn’t realize how easily an older person’s skin can tear, even though I’ve shown them the difference in skin turgor between their hands and mine. But the good part was they now know, and I think they’ve learned that this is not a serious thing, that it can happen easily when you’re older, and they are not responsible. I think they got the drift because the older grandchild (13) ran to get me a band aid, a cute kiddie-patterned one.

Thus ended my first Christmas with my new adorable grand dogs. But I should tell you, they really are not dogs. My daughter refers to them as “the girls.” Their names are Mocha and Latte. And I want to thank these coffee-sounding gals for giving me these wonderfully educational gifts for Christmas.

I wonder what they’ll give me next year.