BREAKING: RIP SUNNY! OBAMAS ANNOUNCE HEARTBREAKING LOSS of their beloved former First Dog after 13 years with the family. “We will miss her terribly.”
Former President Barack Obama shared some heartbreaking news this morning: Sunny, the rambunctious Portuguese Water Dog who spent much of Obama’s second term bounding around the White House, has died at 13.
“Yesterday, we lost a cherished member of our family,” Obama wrote in a deeply personal tribute.
Sunny joined the Obamas in 2013, becoming little sister to Bo, the family’s first Portuguese Water Dog – and quickly developing a personality all her own. The two became familiar fixtures of White House life, appearing with the family, greeting visitors and romping together on the South Lawn.
Obama remembered Sunny as a “force of nature” – athletic, endlessly energetic and capable of sailing over the South Lawn hedges in pursuit of squirrels, birds or apparently anything else foolish enough to move in her vicinity.
Treats worked on Bo, who died in 2021. Sunny had other ideas. She wanted the family to run with her, roll around on the floor with her and rub her belly for as long as human endurance permitted.
A true celebrity canine, she met and got her head scratched by a host of heads of state and even Pope Francis.
She adored Sasha and Malia, Obama wrote, even when they interrupted her naps. She followed White House staffers around while they worked and was fiercely protective of Bo, whom Sunny evidently concluded needed somebody keeping an eye on him. And she had quirks.
Sunny preferred people to other dogs. She drank water loudly and sloppily. And in perhaps the greatest occupational mismatch in presidential-pet history, the Portuguese Water Dog hated getting wet.
“But as far as our family was concerned, she was pretty much perfect,” Obama wrote, remembering Sunny as “always loyal, always sweet, always ready for adventure.”
Sunny’s death closes another small but surprisingly vivid chapter of the Obama family’s White House years. For millions of Americans, Bo and Sunny weren’t political figures.
They were simply the two shaggy black dogs who occasionally wandered into photographs of history being made – blissfully unaware that the house where they lived was anything unusual. And Obama ended his goodbye with the thought every person who has loved and lost a dog will understand.
“We will miss her terribly,” he wrote, “and imagine she’s with her big brother now, making sure he’s okay.”
We’ll all miss you too, Sunny, and the warmth you brought to the White House in happier times. 