I was born in one of the S litters. All of us had to have names starting with S. The humans named me Sunnie. Then they sent me to live with a family from the 4h and they raised me until I was about sixteen months old. They taught me how to obey basic commands like sit and come, and not to beg or bark too much. I was taught how to act on buses and trains and how to behave around other people and animals. I even had a cat friend who I slept with named Otto. Then they brought me to the Seeing Eye.

The trainer, Bob, taught me how to obey commands like forward, left and right. He taught me how to use a harness. He put it on me and got me used to wearing it, then taught me how to guide in it. He corrected me if I didn’t do something right and praised me when I did. Then they put me with another human.

Another trainer, Ralph, came and got me and brought me to a room where a young woman with short brown hair and blue eyes was waiting. He told her to call me.

“Jodie, this is Sunnie. She’s a golden retriever. Call her. Tell her to come.”

“Sunnie,” the woman said excitedly, “come!” She sounded very happy to meet me.

Always eager to meet new people, I ran to her. She petted me and talked to me, then she and Ralph brought me to her room and Ralph left me there alone with her.

I was confused. What did they want me to do? This strange human had my leash and she held it as I walked around the room, sniffing things and exploring. I kept going back to the door and sniffing it. I wanted to go back to Bob. I didn’t know this human. Was I behaving properly?

Jodie talked to me and petted me. She didn’t try to stop me from walking around the room or sniffing the door. She didn’t seem sure of what to do either. In fact, she seemed a little afraid of me. I could tell that surprised her because she was never afraid of dogs. She also seemed to know I was confused.

Later, Ralph came back with my harness and showed Jodie how to put it on me. Now this I understood! The harness meant I was going to work!

We went to the leisure path and I guided her around it. She was so excited! She kept saying, “she’s really my dog, isn’t she!”

Her dog? How could I be her dog? Bob was my human; he was the one who was training me. Wasn’t I his dog? But Ralph kept saying “yes.”

She praised me all the time we were walking around the path. Then we went back to her room and she talked to me and petted me until Ralph came back with some treats.

I gobbled the treats, then went out to park. I never parked for Jodie before and I was nervous, which made it hard to do. But she was patient with me and waited until I was done.

The next day Ralph started teaching Jodie, who called herself my Mommy, the commands Bob had taught me. She was learning how to interpret my movements through the harness. She praised me if I did something right, but for the first couple of days Ralph was the one who corrected me if I did something wrong. Sometimes we went alone, but usually we went with my half-sister, Trudie, and her human. We had the same father, but different mothers. Trudie’s brother, my half-brother, Tucson, was also in the same class with us, but he usually went alone with his human, when he wasn’t with Bonnet and her human. Ruben and Iroc usually went together, too. We were all in the same class, but Ralph didn’t take more than one or two teams at a time.

Our first solo trip was perfect. The second wasn’t as good, but the high school route went very well. That was the longest and most difficult route.

Mommy and I went with Bonnet and Howard. The humans talked about how Bonnet's human told the instructors what to do and always seemed so sure of himself. Bonnet was his first dog. There was one point during the high school trip where he wasn’t sure of something and Mommy was. Mommy told one of the humans later that she knew it wasn’t nice, but she was glad to see that he wasn’t always as sure of himself as he pretended to be.

We had a few interesting experiences during training. We came back after a walk and a woman gave the humans hot chocolate. Mommy got me settled at her feet and before she could get to the hot chocolate it spilled. She must have had it too close to the edge of the chair. It landed on her sock and my paws. I jumped up and Ralph asked Mommy if I’d gone for the hot chocolate. As if I would do something like that!

“No, she was laying at my feet. I reached for it and it spilled. I think it scared her.”

I lick my feet every chance I get. The humans said this was like humans biting their nails and it was a habit I picked up in the kennels. The humans tried to stop me by putting Bitter Mist on my feet. Ralph showed Mommy the spray bottle and sprayed some in my mouth. What an awful taste! Then Mommy sprayed some on my feet. It worked for a while, but then I went back to licking them, even with the Bitter Mist on me. One of the instructors came into our room to put it on me once and all it did was make Mommy cough for half an hour.

My sister, Sally, was with another human in a different group of students. She left early because Sally wasn’t her first dog. Mommy and Sally's human let us sniff each other and say goodbye before they went home. Later someone told Mommy Sally and her human were allowed to go into the delivery room when her daughter had a baby.

The instructors took all the first timers out to dinner for graduation. We all behaved perfectly for our humans at the restaurant. When we got back to the Seeing Eye, Mommy reached for my harness and couldn’t find it.

“Sunnie, where’d your harness go?”

I had wriggled out of it without her noticing and she found it on the floor next to me.

“You knucklehead!” she laughed. “How did you do that?”

I’ve never done it since then, so Mommy still doesn’t know how I did it and I’m not telling!

A few days later Jeff came and took us in a car to Mommy’s house. A gray-haired woman and a cat lived there. The woman loved me and the cat kept giving everyone dirty looks. I like cats, but they don’t like me. I only want to play with them, but they run away or hiss at me.

We walked all over that day, learning the routes to Mommy’s favorite places, then we went back to the Seeing Eye. The next day Mommy packed up all our things, including my bed, and Jeff took us back to the house again. We never went back to the Seeing Eye after that. I’ve been with Mommy and Gram since then. The cat went away with Mommy’s Godmother, so I’m the only animal here now. I rule the house and keep my crazy humans in line so they can’t get into too much trouble, especially Mommy because I have to guide her. The one time she didn’t do what I wanted her to do she banged her knee on a car that was parked where it shouldn’t have been, so she knows better now. As weird as these humans are, I don’t think they’re half bad. I love them and they take care of me. Mommy and Gram say God chose the right humans for me. I think they’re right.

I wrote this story about five years ago when my ISP as acting up and I couldn't go on the Internet or get my email. This was also the summer I was first introduced to the Harry Potter books. I don't know why I remember that, or why I associate that with this story; I just do.

Sunnie died on December 10, 2005, two days after her tenth birthday. I reitred her two years before and she lived close by, so I was still able to see her. Anything over ten years old with goldens is a gift, so I was glad she made it to ten. She had bladder cancer and her vet didn't expect her to last two months. he made that preciction in March and she died in December, so she lived seven months past the time she was expected to die.