our Sunni Lou just like that.
Dogs are loyal. They know who their people are, that their home is wherever they are, their food bowl, and maybe a pillow is all they need. Dogs never lie to us, gossip behind our backs, or get angry when we’re in a bad mood from a long day at work. Instead, they wag their tail, lay at our feet, meet us at the door just like every day, happy to see us. We get used to them being there for us, making us feel better and happy for no reason at all, except that we just need them and they never fail us.
March 2004, we got a phone call to go see a litter of labradors about 8 weeks old. We were told we could pick one for free, registration papers and all. Daddo couldn’t believe it, but he was super stoked to get out there. I was about 3 months pregnant with our first baby and we had my old 12 year old cat that I had since junior high. It was just us, newly married, getting ready for this big adventure of raising kids. So we started with a puppy. I don’t remember how we picked her, but there were 7 puppies, and Daddo and I both fell for the little girl with the golden eyes. Solid chocolate, nice square head, and big feet. The breeders and their kids were out playing softball in their front year, so we watched as all of the puppies ran around to stretch their legs. I kept my eye on our girl. I already felt like she was ours and I wanted her to be careful. When we left, we headed to town for supplies. I specifically remember riding in the truck, the same black Chevy we still have, Daddo driving, and me holding our puppy in my lap. It was late in the day and we were driving toward the sunset. “What should we name her?” we both asked each other. I mentioned how her hair was the color of the dark orange sky. That’s when Daddo said “How about Sunni?” I immediately said “Lou! Sunni Lou!” And before we could get from Overton to Kilgore, our Sunni Lou had her name and we had our puppy.
Our first summer together was Sunni’s only summer without any human babies around. She was our joy and our focus. We took her camping, to the lake, to the pond, taught her tricks, and trained her (as much as we could). We bought a big blue kennel for her to sleep in at night and to potty train. She ended up loving that thing and still used it until she was old. I spent a lot of time outside in the yard that summer painting our old dresser for the baby’s nursery. It feels like yesterday. Sunni wouldn’t stay away from the dresser, or where I was sitting and she kept running around, or napping near me. She finally got a huge brush stroke of white primer across her back hip and I couldn’t help but laugh. We have that picture framed. Her first time around water was Lake O the Pines not long after we got her. We were camping and started to get in the boat that was on the bank. She was still less than 3 months old and she wasn’t sure about that water. Of course when Jake walked in it to climb in the boat, he looked back over his shoulder to see what she would do, and she started wading in the shallow water, then running, then licking it and splashing. She was a water dog!!! Some time after that, we took a quick outing to Caddo Lake. We were out on the flat bottom boat gliding along with the trolling motor. Lilly pads were everywhere and Sunni saw one she wanted. We heard a splash and our girl had jumped in the lake and was swimming to the one pad she set her eyes on. We
watched her get to it and started pulling and tugging on this thing that was attached to the bottom of the lake. She finally gave up and started swimming back to the boat. Daddo pulled her in and she found her a spot at the front of the boat and slept the rest of the afternoon.
As soon as we brought Sunni home, we started trying to potty train her. She had been in an outdoor kennel with her siblings. She was used to going whenever she needed so my earliest memories of potty training include cleaning up puppy diarrhea from our little bathroom while I was gagging from the smell during my 1st trimester of pregnancy. I also remember how aggressively she ate from her little bowl when she first came home. She wasn’t used to having all the food to herself and would growl if we touched her or came near her while eating for fear we’d take it like her siblings used to. Daddo started messing with her ears and poking her and scooting the bowl to aggravate her. As soon as she growled, he’d spank her little bottom. This was our first time to deal with punishing our ‘child’ and at first I wasn’t sure about the spanking. She was so little. But not long at all, and you could pull her ears, take her bowl, even pick her up while she was eating, and she would just stop and wait for you to be done. I don’t think I ever heard her growl ever again after those first few spankings around her dinner bowl. At least not growl at her people. The Fedex man is a different story.
When our second baby came home, our first little human, Sunni was about 9 months old and really growing fast, hyper and energetic. What I remember most about getting home from the hospital with our brand new baby boy was Daddo having to hold the baby carrier way up high above his shoulders to keep the excited Sunni Lou from jumping up and reaching it. Almost every huge milestone and memory has a story with Sunni in it. She was always right there. Our babies’ first steps were around Sunni lying in the floor, Christmas presents were with Sunni covered in the paper, painting our Halloween pumpkins with Sunni right in the middle of it, front yard soccer and baseball included Sunni either running with us or laying in the san augustine watching her family play.
Her favorite thing in the whole world was playing fetch with a tennis ball. She would run as fast as she could to bring it back to you, and then played tug of war with you to get it out of her mouth. Ahhh, she also loved tug of war with a sock. Her and Daddo would get down in the floor, with opposite ends of the sock in their mouths, and pull back and forth until one of them let go. Sunni lost several baby teeth playing this game. Other than swimming, chasing a ball, and playing tug of war, Sunni loved riding in the back of her Daddo’s truck. When she was younger, she jumped out just down the road from our little house on 2012 and landed on her stomach. Somehow she didn’t break anything, but she had a road burn in the shape of a heart on her chest. She loved riding on anything. If she heard the four wheeler start up she would bark and not stop barking or running beside you until you stopped and turned off the engine.
Of course, there were times that Sunni Lou drove us insane. When she was younger and still hyper, she would push open the gate as soon as you opened it and would take off running while ignoring your demands to come back. Those were days I yelled at her and fumed with anger. When I was pregnant with our second baby and also had an 18 month old clinging to my leg, getting out of my car and into the house became difficult. Sunni was always so happy to see us when we came home she would jump up accidentally clawing me, pushing down Will, knocking my bags out of my arms while I screamed and she just wagged her tail and kept jumping. When Daddo built a chain link fence to divide Sunni’s yard from the driveway and sidewalk, she still jumped with excitement when she saw us get home. She literally had a lateral leap higher than that fence and could at any moment jump over it. I was staying home from working for a couple of years when my oldest two were younger.
Living at a highway intersection trying to put two toddlers down for a nap with a Labrador in the house, was next to impossible. But Sunni also kept little 20 month old Will from running out in the highway one day when he managed to get out of the yard. I frantically searched for him and found them down by the mailbox, him circling around with his play lawnmower, and Sunni running behind him barking. If it wasn’t for me hearing her, I don’t know if I would’ve found him so close to the highway before something horrible happened. My heart still skips a beat when I think of the image of him and Sunni down by the road.
These were also the days that Sunni and I were able to jog together. I put her on the leash and we would run 1-2 miles. I remember tugging the leash and telling her to ‘HEEL’ like Daddo would when he was gun training her. She always listened to his voice much better than mine.
Hunting…. both of her parents were trained retrieving dogs. Daddo isn’t much of a duck hunter, so his talented water dog wasn’t much needed for his trips to the deer stand, but occasionally he hit the duck pond for some fun. He took her to target practice several times and taught her to heel next to his leg and stay until he told her to ‘FETCH.’ She never moved a muscle while he fired his gun. So the evening Daddo and his friend Uncle Jason showed up at the house needing Sunni to fetch a duck they had lost on the pond, we wondered what she was capable of with no duck training. She loaded up in the back of the truck, went a few miles down the road, jumped out, let her smell of one of the other kills, then Daddo threw a stick in the direction of where they thought the lost duck had fallen. She took off swimming… I haven’t seen Daddo that excited in shooting a duck in, ever. They got back home bragging on the dog who didn’t even see the duck fall but went out there and retrieved it… without making a single puncture.
Of course Sunni became a mother herself two separate times. With her first litter, our second baby was only weeks old. I remember watching Sunni be so patient with all of her 5 babies giving each of them time to nurse, then a bath, then lay down gently in bed with them all. I definitely caught myself marveling over what an incredible mother my dog was to her babies, while I was struggling to find the energy and patience to take care of my two. Her second litter was a few years later. This night just stands out for some reason. I was cooking chilli dogs of all things, pregnant with our third baby, while Sunni was in the foyer off the side of the kitchen giving birth all evening. One of those puppies didn’t make it and it broke her heart. She looked for it while counting her babies. I felt so bad for her. All of her puppies grew to be amazing just like their momma.
As Sunni Lou grew older, she still loved her same activities, just did them a little slower. She fetched anything you threw, but she swam a little lower in the water, and took her time jogging back to you when you threw the ball. She knew when she handed it over she had to be ready to go after it again. She loved swimming for as long as I can remember. She even swam this passed summer at the age of 13. She was worried about it and Daddo had to help her take the step down from the shallow step, but when she did, she took off swimming in circles.
Sunni didn’t much like change either. Kind of like us and our same old truck, Sunni loved her same dog bowl, her bed, and her ragged tennis ball. When we moved into our current home about a year ago, we could tell she didn’t like it much. She paced more, couldn’t find where she wanted to lie down. For awhile, we often found her in our closet on the soft carpet. Then she started laying in the den on her bed where we usually all gathered in the evenings. Of course, she couldn’t make it up the stairs so she never went up there. One day this passed summer one of the kids asked if she could go up there. Daddo picked her up and walked up the stairs and sat her down on the landing. She walked from room to room exploring like it was a new camping spot. We said, “Sunni’s thinking ‘Ya’ll hiding this from me?’” She eventually felt like home here and found her favorite places to sleep. If we were outside, she was outside; if we were in the den, she was in the den; if the boys were in the gameroom, she was on that rug; and if I was in the kitchen or in the office, she was at my feet. Her favorite time in the summer was sitting on the front porch in front of Daddo while he rocked in the chair rubbing his foot on her back.
She was always surrounded by her kids. Even though she was our first baby, her face was always excited and intrigued when we brought yet another baby human into our home. Our four kiddos loved her their own way. Will and Cole experienced her more during her puppy stages, hyper and energetic. They saw her jump into the truck without help, sprint across the pasture for the baseball, and run through the snow for hours. Rhett and Cora experienced the calmer age of Sunni, laying around on her bed, enjoying the warm campfire, meeting us at the door wagging her tail but never jumping on anyone. She was the dog that was always there. She was part of the only family they knew. When we went camping, she went with us, hiking for miles at a time. Her last time to go hiking was at Cleburne State Park in the Fall of 2014. That was the last time she really hiked far with us. The boys always took turns holding her leash and she stayed right in the middle of us taking a rest if we ever stopped to look at the trail map. She loved every minute. She continued to go camping, but would stay in her kennel at the camper while we went for our hikes. She loved the campfire, listening to her people talking, and then sleeping inside at the foot of our bed.
I am forever grateful for this dog. She brought love to our family that I don’t think we would have felt without her. She taught my children about unconditional love, patience, loyalty, and kindness. I know she is running through the pastures and playing fetch in the heavenly ponds enjoying her strong, healthy body. I also know that she would want us to honor her memory by rescuing another dog and giving it the life she had. But we’re not close to ready for that. For now, I miss Sunni. I miss her sleeping in our bedroom floor, standing under my feet in the kitchen, slobbering all over the back door, running after tennis balls, and eating up all the cat food in the laundry room. I don’t remember my married life without her. My kids don’t know our family with her not there. Our new normal just hurts so bad. Day two waking up without her wagging tail hitting the floor, the boys not having to walk her and feed her breakfast, was slightly easier than day one. I know it’ll get better for us. I know she was just a dog. But we are creatures of habit. We need love, companionship, and joy in our lives. Dogs do that. They give us so much more than we can give them. Like our Cole said, if only they could live as long as a turtle. But then, so many other dogs wouldn’t have a family. I know our Sunni Lou wouldn’t want that.
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