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Barack Obama announced on September 16, 2026 that Sunny, the Portuguese Water Dog who joined his family at the start of his second presidential term, had died the day before, Tuesday, September 15, at the age of 13. Sunny came into the Obama family in August 2013, alongside their first dog, Bo, and quickly became a familiar, rambunctious presence around the White House.
“Yesterday, we lost a cherished member of our family,” Obama wrote in a social media post announcing her death, sharing a series of photos including one of the family and Sunny meeting Pope Francis in 2015. He didn’t identify a cause of death. Obama described Sunny in detail, calling her “a force of nature,” athletic and full of boundless energy, known for leaping over the hedges on the White House’s South Lawn while chasing squirrels, birds, and anything else that moved.
He also described her personality and her bond with Bo. “She was fiercely protective of Bo, who she rightly sensed wasn’t always as alert and attentive as she was,” Obama wrote. “She had her eccentricities: other than Bo, she preferred people to dogs. But as far as our family was concerned, she was pretty much perfect, and for thirteen years, she would be by our side, always loyal, always sweet, always ready for adventure, still fiery and gorgeous till the very end of her days. We will miss her terribly, and imagine she’s with her big brother now, making sure he’s okay.”
Bo, the Obamas’ first dog and Sunny’s longtime companion, died in 2021 after a battle with cancer. Together, the two dogs became one of the more visible features of the Obama White House years, their dark curly coats and playful energy turning them into a recognizable part of the administration’s public image.
My thoughts: What stands out in Obama’s statement is how specific the details are, not a generic tribute, but a real accounting of a dog’s particular personality, her eccentricities, her protectiveness over Bo, the exact way she’d clear a hedge chasing a squirrel. That level of specificity is usually what separates a genuine loss from a formal announcement, and it’s clear which one this is. Losing Sunny four years after Bo also closes out a fairly public chapter of the Obama family’s life, the two dogs who spent years as a familiar, photographed presence in a house that isn’t theirs anymore, now both gone.
Source: CNN / NBC News / Washington Post / TMZ / The Washington Times
