Top dog: White House gets its first pet from a rescue home
WHEN Joe Biden moves into the White House in January, it won’t just be Kamala Harris breaking new ground. The president-elect will bring two new canine residents with him to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, including the building’s first rescue dog.
Major and Champ, both German shepherds, will be the first dogs in the White House since Barack Obama’s Portuguese Water Dogs Bo and Sunny moved out in January 2017.
Mr Obama promised a puppy to his daughters, Malia and Sasha, during the 2008 election and chose the breed for its hypoallergenic fur, as Malia Obama is allergic to dog dander.
The Bidens adopted Major from the Delaware Humane Association in 2018, 10 years after Mr Biden and his wife Jill acquired Champ, and, according to NBC News, it will be the first rescue dog to live at the White House.
There is a long tradition of White House pets, including a raccoon, but it was eschewed by Donald Trump.
He is believed to be the first president since James K Polk in the 1840s to not keep some kind of animal companion.
At a 2019 rally, Mr Trump mocked the idea of owning a dog, saying “How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn? I don’t know, I don’t feel good. Feels a little phoney”.
He also claimed he had been advised to get a canine companion because it was “good politically”.
Mr Biden’s social media used a clip of the rally in a light-hearted campaign message to “put dogs back in the White House”.
Herbert Hoover is said to have been the first president to politicise his pets. He distributed signed photographs of himself with his own German Shepherd, King Tut, to soften his image. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, was accused of acquiring his chocolate Labrador, Buddy, in 1997 to distract from the Lewinsky scandal.
The presidential raccoon was presented to Calvin Coolidge in 1926 to be eaten in a Thanksgiving feast, but the first family chose to keep it as a pet and named it Rebecca.
They acquired a male companion for it, named Reuben, but the new creature escaped and was never found.