OPRAH WINFREY'S DOGS

Oprah Winfrey is very famous, so that means most everybody has heard of her, and I don't have to explain who she is.  The way she got famous was by having a talk show on TV for a long time.  Also she has a magazine called O, and a television network called OWN.  What's even more important is that Ms. Winfrey is very rich, which is amazing, since she started out being really poor when she was a little girl.  But she got a job in radio and then later in television, and she was very good at doing talk shows and getting people to tell her interesting personal things about themselves.  So that's why her show got to be so popular, and why she made a bunch of money.

Ms. Winfrey with Sadie

Ms. Winfrey is ranked as the richest African-American of the 20th century, and for a while she was the only black billionaire in the whole world.  She is the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and some people have called her the most influential woman in the world.

Of course, the best thing about Oprah Winfrey is that she loves dogs.  The breeds of dogs that she seems to love most are cocker spaniels and golden retrievers.  I have tried to sort of put together the most recent history of Ms. Winfrey's dogs, but it's a little confusing, so I hope I got it right.

Sophie and Solomon

I will start in 2005, when Ms. Winfrey already owned two cocker spaniels named Sophie and Solomon.  Sophie was black, and Solomon was more of a chocolate color.  In that same year, Ms. Winfrey decided to adopt two golden retrievers.  She went to a breeder to get them, and she ended up bringing home three pups instead of just two.  These three were named Layla, Luke, and Gracie.

The 3 golden puppies

Then in May of 2007, a very sad thing happened when Gracie was out with her dog walker, and she got ahold of a small ball that belonged to Sophie.  Gracie started playing with this ball and then she swallowed it and it got stuck in her throat.  She choked to death, even though the dog walker and a security guard tried very hard to save her.

When Gracie died, Ms. Winfrey was very, very sad, and she cried a lot.  She said, "I do not believe in accidents.  I know for sure that everything that happens in life helps us to stay alive."  She also said that Gracie did more living in the two years of her life than most dogs do during a much longer life.  "Every moment of her life Gracie lived as if it was the last moment," Ms. Winfrey said in her magazine.  "Her life became a gift for me."

Do some people really look like their dogs?

About a year after that, in March 2008, Sophie the cocker spaniel died.  She was 13, and she had kidney failure.  Ms. Winfrey devoted a whole TV show to the memory of her dog.  "Sophie gave me 13 years of unconditional love.  She was the true love in my life."   And then in November of that same year, Solomon also died.  He was 14 years old, which is pretty old for a cocker spaniel, I think.

Sadie

The next dogs that Oprah Winfrey adopted were two cocker spaniel puppies from the PAWS animal shelter in Chicago.  These puppies were named Ivan and Sadie.  But sadly, they got sick right away with parvovirus.  Ms. Winfrey took them to the vet, who tried very hard to save them, and Sadie lived, but Ivan didn't.

A couple of years ago Ms. Winfrey decided that she wanted a couple of springer spaniels, and some springer puppies showed up at PAWS, so she adopted them.  Their names are Sunny and Lauren, and they are sisters.  And as far as I could figure out, those were the most recent dogs that joined the Winfrey family.

Sunny and Lauren

But here's something that really shocked me:  Oprah Winfrey has announced that she will leave $30 million for her dogs in a trust fund so that they will be taken care of after she dies.  All of her dogs are fed by a special chef, have their own nannies, and also have their own websites.  If the dogs don't use up all the $30 million before they die, I wonder what will happen to the rest of it.  Maybe I should write to Ms. Winfrey and ask her if I can have it!