Dog Names that Start with So

Sounder was a Coon Hound who was owned by a poor, sharecropper’s family in the 1930s. Although Sounder did not protect or save lives by going to war or saving someone from a fire, he did much more for this family, giving them hope and helping them deal with such a difficult time. In the 1930s, being a black family in the south was hard as they were treated badly by white people and lived off scraps and whatever they could hunt for. 

Sounder's family is extremely poor, and they depend on the meat that his father and Sounder can hunt each night. However, there is very little to eat in their area since there are so many poor families who hunt, and the family goes to bed hungry most nights. One day, the family wakes up to the smell of freshly cooked meat and discovers a ham on the table. They feel like they were blessed, but soon the sheriff and his men are banging on the door looking for the father, who stole the ham for his family. 

As they take the father away, Sounder chases the deputies and sheriff trying to protect his master, but one of the deputies shoots him, and he runs off, injured. However, the boy continues to search every day for his faithful family pet. While his father is in prison, the family struggles to live on the money that their mother makes selling walnuts that she picks every day. The boy helps by taking care of his three younger siblings, but he still looks for Sounder every day. 

At Christmas, the boy takes a cake to the prison that his mother made for their father, but the guard tears it up, claiming there may be a tool to break out of jail inside. The boy is angry and embarrassed, and his father tells him never to come back to the jail. He leaves, upset, and goes home to sleep. The next morning, Sounder shows up at the door, with only three good legs and he is missing an ear and an eye. He is also unable to bark but he is alive, and the boy is happy to see him. 

During his father’s stay in prison, the boy and Sounder take over the hunting and provide for the family, but they also spend time searching for his father in the chain gangs all over the state. This goes on for years but one day, the boy is confronted by a guard who hits him on the hand with a metal pipe and makes him leave. As he is walking back to town, he finds a book in the trash outside a school and picks it up. Afterward, he is washing the blood from his injured fingers, and one of the teachers sees him and talks to him about the book. 

The teacher offers for him to stay with her while she teaches him how to read since only white children were allowed in schools back then. The boy and his mother agree, and he quickly learns to read and becomes more literate and self-assured. A few months later, his father returns to the family, but he is barely able to walk due to a quarry injury. When Sounder sees him, he finally barks again because he is so happy to see his master. The boy has grown into a strong and intelligent man who can provide for his family and they are all proud of him.