Dog smiles in viral photo with Santa, a real-life version of her favorite chew toy

A 1-year-old Shiba Inuna dog, Kya, got to meet her life-size best friend just in time for the holidays.

Kya's owners, John Montaldo, 16, and sister Angelina, 19, of Florida, bought the dog a Santa chew toy last year around Christmas and she fell in love with it.

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"She always goes and gets that one and like brings it to us when we get home when she's all excited," said Angelina Montaldo.

So, this year they upgraded her gift and took her to an Orlando mall to meet her idol in person.

The siblings saw an ad to have Santa take a picture with your pet and were immediately sold.

"I like told all my friends we were going to take her to see him and they were all like, 'omg you're ridiculous, don't do it,' but we were like no we have to because all of our friends know our dog and so we were like I'm sure Kya will be excited and everyone would get a kick out of it," Angelina told Inside Edition.

She said the ad was for family pictures with your pet but they wanted to give Kya that special moment.

The photo that resulted shows an extremely cheesy Kya right next to her favorite guy.

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"She was really excited even on the way there," Angelina said. "We just put her on the seat next to Santa and she sat pretty calm and then when they went to take the picture she opened her mouth," Angelina said.

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The siblings thought the photo was hilarious and posted it to Twitter where it quickly went viral, collecting more than 80,000 retweets.

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