“Your monkey is riding your dog around the neighborhood” - Mike Miller once shared a hilarious story about having a pet monkey

Allow me to introduce you to Sonny. Sonny was a monkey—not just any monkey, but a Java macaque who was once the pet of retired NBA player Mike Miller and his wife. The three of them lived happily together in Orlando, Florida.

Mike described Sonny as "smarter than most people he ran with" and even capable of opening door handles on his own. This once led to a hilarious situation. It all started when Mr. and Mrs. Miller, before leaving for dinner, placed Sonny in a room and their two Great Dane dogs outside.

“About an hour and a half later, my wife gets a call from one of our neighbors, ‘Your monkey is riding your dog around the neighborhood… We come home—and if I’m lying, I’m dying—we pull down the street, and Sonny is riding our Great Dane down the road,” recounted Miller during his 2016 appearance on the Mike & Mike podcast.

Sonny joined the Millers during the 2000-01 season

Professional ball players often have the financial means to own and care for pets. So when Miller joined the league on a reported four-year, roughly $11 million contract with the Magic , he wanted to follow suit.

However, with two dogs already at home, the lottery pick from the 2000 Draft was looking for something a bit more exotic. It wasn’t a completely new idea for him; Mike mentioned that having a monkey “was always something I wanted.”

Consequently, during his debut NBA season, in which the sharpshooter won the ROY award, he and his wife finally decided to go through with the plan. Before that, they had to obtain a state license and then reportedly purchased Sonny from a professional breeder in Missouri.

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Living with a pet monkey

A quick online search shows that having a pet monkey is both rare (with reportedly only around 15,000 pet primates in the U.S.) and quite demanding—two facts that are likely connected.

The two-time NBA Champ with the Heat highlighted the latter point himself, likening monkey ownership to raising a child and noting that it requires “a lot of work.” Fortunately, as Mike remembered, much of that was handled by his significant other.

“You have to change his diapers, give him his bottle, and he wakes up in the middle of the night. There's all that kind of stuff,” the former 6'8'' player explained .

However, according to Miller, that trouble was definitely worth it overall, and living with Sonny was simply “awesome.”

Unfortunately, anyone now hoping to find a video of Miller's monkey showcasing these memorable antics will be disappointed, as no footage exists.

“I wish we had a video,” the 44-year-old remarked. “Back then, we only had flip phones, so things were different.”

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