COMPANIONS-IN-CHIEF
One woman’s labour of love, the Presidential Pet Museum is a shrine to the animals that called White House home,
Claire McLean sat pondering the gem of her collection — a portrait of Ronald Reagan’s dog Lucky made from Lucky’s actual hair — and finally acknowledged a painful reality: the world is just not that into the Presidential Pet Museum.
After more than15 up-and-down years and iffy stints in three locations, the former White House dog groomer is giving up on the ultimate pet project. The 83-year-old put up for sale her unparalleled collection of Oval Office animalia, along with a website, PresidentialPetMuseum.com, that details every companion-in-chief going back to George Washington’s hound, Sweet Lips.
It was all on the auction website Flippa.com: the Taft-era bell worn by the last cow to graze on the South Lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the bronzed Barney (Scottish terrier, George W. Bush administration); the hair-isimilitude paintings of Lucky, Barney and Miss Beazley (also Bush) featuring certified clippings from their respective coats.
It was offered as a single lot. She and her partner hoped to get $30,000 (U.S.). Instead, bidding topped out at $9,600, less than the reserve price.
“I just can’t break it up. That would be like breaking up the Beatles,” said McLean with a laugh. She was being interviewed before the auction ended, sitting amid her late-life’s work in a cluttered assisted-living apartment in Washington.
With a tentative knock, two more visitors came through the open door, squeezing past the prez petthemed paintings leaning against the furniture.
Most of the collection was already packed away in her Dodge Caravan, ready to roll to its next home. But for one last day, she had pulled out a few treasures and opened her room as pop-up pet museum for her fellow residents at the Knollwood Military Retirement Residence.
McLean, the widow of an air force officer, once ran a kennel and bred Bouvier des Flandres dogs for sale and show. In the mid-1980s, she got a call from White House horticulturalist Dale Haney, a keeper of presidential pets since the days of Gerald Ford’s golden retriever, Liberty. The Reagans needed a trim for their Bouvier, Lucky, and McLean was the expert. For eight glorious months, she was the groomer to the first family. “I was on top of the world until they sent Lucky back to the ranch in California,” McLean said.
But she was left with a bag full of First Fur. Her mother painted a portrait of the dog, pasting Lucky’s own locks all over it. Entranced, McLean, then in her 60s, began scouring antique stores for presidential pet stuff, mainly photographs and portraits: of FDR’s long-serving Scottie, Fala; of Caroline Kennedy’s pony Macaroni; of the mini-zoo that was Teddy Roosevelt’s White House (Rollo the St. Bernard, Emily Spinach the garter snake, Eli Yale the hyacinth macaw, along with assorted flying squirrels, kangaroo rats and a badger named Josiah).
Mostly, she collected what she still loves best about presidential pets: the stories. At her sister’s suggestion, she laid out her collection in a barn at her home, where she would regale a trickle of roadside curiosity fans with animal tales. A museum was born.
“They just loved to hear about Lyndon Johnson holding his beagle by the ears and how much hot water he got into for that,” said McLean.