As all pet owners know, animals can be a wild ride to own. There are memories that range from funny to gross, and some that may be so good that you want to publish them in a book in the future.
It is always hard when they pass away, but it only makes those memories more cherished. RHS senior Cameron Cardoza had a golden retriever named Sammy that he got for his sixth birthday from a family that trains dogs. For the 11 years that Sammy was alive, his favorite thing to do was to lay by his family.
“He always wanted to be with us and sure, he likes chewing on toys and all that, but his favorite thing to do was spend time with us,” Cardoza said.
Sammy would greet whoever came home with his excited barks because he was so happy to have his family home.
“Yeah… that never got old hearing that, like, even as he was starting to pass from his cancer and he could barely stand and he was in a lot of pain, still when we got home he would limp towards us and he would still whimper and bark at us because he wanted to see us,” Cardoza said in remembrance.

RHS’s vice-principal Mr. Ramirez has had chickens for four to five years. His family got their first set of three chicks for their sons during Easter. All of the chicks had names, but they looked the same, so they did not know who was who. Now, Betty is the only chicken left from the original three.
“We don’t really know if that one is actually Betty or not, but Betty was the strongest of the three names and since she’s lasted this long we have chosen to identify her as Betty,” Ramirez stated.
Ramirez’s family got another chicken from an animal shelter after one of the originals had passed away. The shelter knew the family had chickens, so the shelter called them to see if they would take the chicken. They ended up taking the chicken and naming her Red since she was red.
“[The shelter was] like, ‘Hey, we have this chicken that we picked up and we don’t know what to do with it,’ and they asked for us to take it so we took it,” Ramirez says.
One day, Red flew over the Ramirez’s fence, so they went looking for her. She ended up in the neighbor’s yard pecking at the rose garden. They took Red and put her in the back seat of the car right next to Ramirez’s son and Ramirez took a picture of it.
“It’s the cutest picture ever and if I ever write a children’s book, it is going to be called ‘Red Goes For A Ride’ because here she is, just in the backseat of a car,” Ramirez laughed.

Photo Courtesy of CreativeCommons