Sunshine, a very spoiled, very big golden lab was purchased for my step mother upon her finishing nursing school.Everyone who met sunshine loved him, he had natural good looks, and he was a lab, a breed notorious for their outgoing friendliness.He wasn`t just baeutifull, he was smart, and excessively strong; we used to play tug of war with him, and we would sit on the floor and sunshine would drag us on our butts allover the house; my nieces and nephews loved this.Sunshine was a mamber of our family, he ate with us ,travelled with us, and loved to help dad get rid of scraps while he was cooking. Sunshine loved to go outside with his favorite simpson, my dad, and supervise while he chopped wood. My parents live out in the country, so there are lots of other dogs arround, and sunshine liked to visit them, so dad just let him out to run free lots. It was december 11th, the first big snow fall of the season was blanketing our property nicely, and sunshine was outside with Dad. dad was trying to build a wood shed, so wasnt paying much attention to our lab. I was outside talking to dad and the lat time i saw sunshine he was entertaining himself with a plastic pop bottle. Dad was headed inside shortly after that and called for sunshine, thinking he was at our neighbors house, but he didnt come. This was highly unusual because every time my dad called him he always came running happily allong. We called and called for our sunshine, we even drove around the neighborhood and asked neighbors if they had seen him, but night was quickly approaching, and we became increasingly worried. At arround betime, dad and i put sunshines bed out on the deck and some food, in hopes that if he had taken off that he might smell the food and come running ( he had a very healthy appetite). Morning came and i expected to greet me on the top of the stairs as he always did, but he wasnt there. That day we called the radio stations and prepared missing posters. We posted these posters all over our small town. There were many calls in our neighborhood, and we went and searched everytime someone called to report a lab in their yard. It didnt matter what time it was dad and i would go out in the middle of the night and park the car and call in to the cold night for our friend.Every call lead to no sunshine. few months later, we were still hopefull, thinking that by now perhaps he was lost and living off of garbage, and too affriad to come home. I believe it was march when Dad got a call from ouor neighbor to come over. The neighbor had been snowplowing his long driveway when he found dog remains. Dad looked at it and knew for sure it was our sweet sunshine dog. He came home with sunshine wrapped in a tarp. Dad came downstairs and told me it was him, our beloved family mascot was dead, and had been all those nights we called for him. We hugged and cried for a long time, sad faces were everywhere in the house, it seemed the tears were never going to stop. My dad had the job of telling our nieces and one nephew, aged 4-8, he had them write sunshine letters in heaven. These kids hardly knew what death was, and dad had the job of helping them to understand and grieve. We had our dog cremated and he now sits proudly on my parents mantle over the fire place. every once in a while when i visit, i will look in the decorated box that sunshine is in , there is a little toy, or a little letter from the kids, telling him how much they miss him. We still talk about sunshine very often , this all happened last winter, adn we will for a long time to come. We couldnt forget sunshine even if we wanted to, he was too special. My dad couldnt stand the emptyness of the house without sunshine, so a while after we found out about sunshines demise, dad went looking for another friend to keep him company. Dad decided on a golden retriever, and called about an add for retriever puppies, when dad found out that the pups were born december 11- the day sunshine died, he knew it was fate and he had to get two.