It's the beginning of 2021, and there are some new residents at the White House - we
are speaking, of course, of Champ and Major Biden, the two German Shepherds belonging
to President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
Presidential pets are a tradition stretching all the way back to George Washington and
most presidents, with very few exceptions, have kept animals while in office.
President Biden is making a popular choice with his dogs.
Of the 42 presidents to keep pets, 33 of them had at least one dog during their time in
office.
Birds were the second most popular type of pet, being owned by 18 different presidents,
followed by 14 presidents who owned horses.
Surprisingly, cats came in at #4 and have only accompanied 12 presidents during their
time in office.
We're not going to cover every pet for every president, but let's start all the way back
with George Washington.
George Washington was a well-known dog lover and a breeder of American Foxhounds, although
he kept other dog breeds as well.
Some of his notable pooches?
Vulcan, Drunkard, and ... Sweetlips.
Along with his dogs he kept horses, a donkey given to him by King Charles III of Spain,
and a parrot named Snipe.
His successor, John Adams, had horses named Caesar and Cleopatra and three dogs, one of
which was named Satan.
Thomas Jefferson kept mockingbirds, dogs, and horses, and was given a pair of grizzly
bear cubs by Zebulon Pike (of Pike's Peak fame).
The cubs were considered "too dangerous and troublesome to keep" and were sent to live
in a museum in Philadelphia.
Skipping ahead to John Quincy Adams, the 6th president: he kept silkworms in mulberry trees
on the White House grounds.
President Adams showed great interest in the progress of his silkworms, watching them develop
and counting the eggs they laid.
His wife, Louisa, harvested their silk to spin.
President number 7, Andrew Jackson, owned horses and fighting gamecocks, but he also
famously owned a foul-mouthed parrot named Poll.
Poll was an African grey parrot.
Jackson bought her for his wife, Rachel, but when she died he cared for the bird himself.
They must have gotten close, because when the former president died Poll came to his
funeral.
According to the Reverend conducting the service, "Before the sermon and while the crowd was
gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so
loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house."
He also said the birds was "excited by the multitude and … let loose perfect gusts
of 'cuss words.'"
The mourners were apparently "horrified and awed at the bird's lack of reverence."
Andrew Jackson's successor, Martin van Buren, was given a pair of tiger cubs by the Sultan
of Oman.
Unlike SOME presidents, he was thrilled that he was going to have a cute little pair of
apex predators at the White House and started preparing his home for them.
Unfortunately, Congress objected.
They claimed that the cubs were a gift to the United States, and not van Buren personally.
Martin van Buren argued ferociously, but in the end Congress won and the cubs were sent
to the local zoo... which is probably where they belonged, actually.
Several presidents down the line we come to Abraham Lincoln.
He had goats, dogs, cats, horses and rabbits during his time in the White House, but one
notable creature from his presidency was a turkey named Jack.
Jack arrived at the White House in November of 1863, and Abraham Lincoln's ten-year-old
son, Tad, quickly made the turkey his pet and taught it to follow him around the White
House grounds.
When Tad found out that Jack was supposed to be killed for Christmas dinner, he cried
and begged his father to spare the bird.
The soft-hearted Lincoln wrote a stay of execution which Tad took to the chef, saving Jack's
life and marking the first instance of a president pardoning a turkey.
Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, kept a pair of opossums as
well-loved pets that could often be seen wandering around the White House.
William McKinley had a yellow-headed Mexican parrot that could whistle Yankee Doodle.
It should come as no surprise to anybody that Theodore Roosevelt, famous both as an outdoorsman
and a conservationist, should have the most pets of any president.
The sheer number was due in part to his six children, who had in their household menagerie
five guinea pigs, a bear, a lizard, a pig, a badger, a macaw, a hen, a one-legged rooster,
a hyena, a barn owl, a rabbit, a garter snake, and a pony.
This impressive list doesn't even include the more 'normal' dogs and cats.
During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep on the White House lawn.
The sheep saved manpower by trimming the grass, and their wool was auctioned off to support
the Red Cross War Fund.
The first presidential pet to be a celebrity was an Airedale Terrier named Laddie Boy,
belonging to Warren G. Harding.
Laddie Boy was famous.
He had his own chair to sit in at Cabinet meetings, the White House had birthday parties
for him, he attended fundraisers with the First Lady, and an official portrait was made
of him.
The Washington Star and the New York Times regularly ran stories on Laddie Boy, even
reporting his death six years after he left the White House.
Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, seemed to want to rival Theodore Roosevelt's pet
collection.
Along with about a dozen dogs, several cats, and some birds (which included ducks and geese)
the Coolidges had some more exotic pets such as a pair of raccoons, a bobcat, two lion
cubs and a pygmy hippopotamus, a wallaby, a black bear, and a duiker (or a very small
type of antelope).
Some of these more interesting pets eventually found their way to a zoo.
Once Coolidge was out of the White House, no more exotic animals would take up residence,
but that didn't stop presidential pets from attracting the nation's attention.
Franklin D. Roosevelt owned several dogs, but his favorite and the most famous was a
little Scottish terrier named Fala.
Fala was the President's constant companion, but shortly after arriving at the White House,
the little dog became mysteriously ill.
Following an investigation it turned out that Fala was begging for treats from the White
House staff, who couldn't resist feeding the cute little dog far more than he was supposed
to eat.
The president made a rule that he was the only one allowed to feed his dog, and Fala
quickly recovered.
Fala was so famous that a secretary was assigned to handle his fan mail, and two movies were
made about him.
The youngest man to be elected president, John F. Kennedy moved into the White House
with two young children - as well as their pets.
During his presidency the Kennedy menagerie included hamsters, pet birds, a rabbit, ducklings,
a cat named Tom Kitten and multiple dogs as well as horses and ponies.
One of the more famous Kennedy pets was a puppy named Pushinka.
Pushinka (which is Russian for "Fluffy") was the daughter of a Soviet space dog that orbited
earth aboard Sputnik in 1960 and was a gift from the Soviet Premier to the President and
his family.
There was initially some concern that Pushinka might be a spy - concealing a Russian listening
device somewhere on her little body - but once the secret service checked her out, she
became a favorite not just of the Kennedys but nationwide.
When Pushinka had puppies, about 5,000 people wrote the White House to ask for one, and
two of them were given to children living in the Midwest.
The following president, Lyndon Johnson, was the most recent president to have birds in
the White House, bringing a pair of lovebirds when he moved in.
He also had several dogs including a pair of beagles named Him and Her, but one of the
most famous was a mixed-breed dog named Yuki, who was famous for 'singing duets' - aka,
howling - with the President.
Let's run through the next few presidents.
Richard Nixon had three dogs while in office, Gerald Ford had a Golden Retriever named Liberty
who had a litter of eight puppies at the White House.
Seven of her puppies found good homes and one went on to be a seeing eye dog!
Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang.
Ronald Reagan had dogs, cats and horses at his ranch in California, but the dog that
lived with him at the White House was a little King Charles Spaniel named Rex.
The first President Bush had a Springer Spaniel named Millie.
Millie had puppies while George Bush was in office, and one of those puppies, named Spotty,
went to his son George W. Bush.
When he was elected president in 2000, Spotty came to the White House with him, making it
the only known case of father/son presidents having mother/daughter White House pets.
But we can't skip Bill Clinton!
The Clintons had a cat named Socks, who started his life as a stray on the streets of Little
Rock, Arkansas.
During the Clinton presidency, Socks became a media sensation, and was the first presidential
pet to have a website.
Moving ahead, the Obamas had a pair of Portuguese Water Dogs, Bo and Sunny, as their White House
pets.
The unusual breed was selected because they are hypoallergenic, a concession to allergies
on the part of the President's daughter Malia.
That brings us back to Joe Biden and his German Shepherds, Champ and Major.
Champ joined the Bidens in 2008, after Joe Biden promised his wife Jill that they would
get a dog if Barack Obama won the presidency and he became vice president.
In 2018 they added Major, a rescue that they fostered then adopted from the Delaware Humane
Association.
Major is notable as the first rescue dog to live in the White House.
Preceding Joe Biden's inauguration, the Delaware Humane Association threw an 'indoguration'
ceremony for Major, raising $200,000 in donations.
Through the years, Presidential pets have been a small but important part of American
history.
From wild animals to gifts from foreign dignitaries to ordinary house pets, the animals kept by
our presidents have fostered friendly relationships with other countries, captured the imagination
of Americans, and perhaps most importantly, given their Presidents a furry friend to rely on.