Presidential Pets of the White House

Lincoln's goats are the rare wartime pets you can follow through the president's own words. In August 1863 he telegraphed Mary that poor "Nanny Goat" was lost, after she had last been seen chewing her cud in the middle of Tad's bed. In April 1864 he told her to tell Tad that "the goats and father are very well, especially the goats." Tad was the goats' champion, and the household accounts have him driving a goat-pulled chair through the East Room and scattering visitors. In the middle of the Civil War, these small telegrams show a father keeping his son's world intact. No photograph of the goats is known, so the picture here shows Tad himself, in uniform.

A diplomatic gift with whiskers. The American consul in Bangkok, David Sickels, arranged to ship a Siamese cat to Lucy Hayes in 1878, and when Siam arrived in 1879 she was reportedly the first Siamese cat in the United States. She became a pet of the Hayes daughter Fanny. Her story belongs to the Gilded Age moment when American consuls were reaching into Asia and exotic goods were turning up in American parlors. It is also brief: Siam fell ill and died at the White House. No photograph of her is known, so the picture here shows Bangkok in the 1860s.

The goat that turned a president into a sprinter. Old Whiskers pulled a cart for Benjamin Harrison's grandchildren, and one day, while Harrison waited at the North Portico for his carriage, the goat bolted through the White House gate with the children aboard. A newspaper reporter described the president running down Pennsylvania Avenue in pursuit. The goat was said to belong to Harrison's son Russell, and Frances Benjamin Johnston photographed him in harness on the lawn with the grandchildren, the picture shown here. It is one of the earliest White House pet stories you can see as well as read.

The pony who rode the elevator. When Archie Roosevelt was stuck in bed with measles in 1903, his brothers Quentin and Kermit got his pony Algonquin into the White House elevator and up to the second floor of the residence to cheer him up. The White House Historical Association credits a footman, Charles Reeder, with the job of loading the pony into the elevator. Theodore Roosevelt's family kept a whole menagerie, and Algonquin is the best single window into it: a household where children treated the Executive Mansion as a family home and a president let them. Frances Benjamin Johnston's 1902 photograph shows Archie in the saddle on the grounds.

A working animal rather than a pet, and the better story for it. When the Tafts' first cow, Mooly Wooly, died, Wisconsin Senator Isaac Stephenson sent a prize Holstein from his farm, and Pauline Wayne kept the presidential household supplied with milk and butter. She also traveled like a celebrity. Pauline was shipped by train to a dairy exposition in Milwaukee, and in 1911 her car was misrouted onto a train bound for the Chicago stockyards. After Taft left office in 1913 she went home to Wisconsin. She is often called the last presidential cow to graze on the White House grounds, a detail that marks the end of the mansion as a semi-rural household.

The first presidential pet to become a full media celebrity. Harding gave reporters unusual access to his Airedale terrier, rarely went anywhere without him, and when the press lost interest he wrote letters to newspapers "from" the dog. Laddie Boy attended cabinet meetings and had his own chair, like any cabinet secretary. The 1920s idea of the president as a friendly public figure shows clearly here, and so does the grief after Harding's death in 1923. The nation's newsboys collected some 19,000 pennies in his memory, and the coins were made into a statue of Laddie Boy. The Smithsonian owns it, though it is not on display.

She arrived as Thanksgiving dinner and left as a celebrity. A supporter from Mississippi sent the Coolidges a raccoon in 1926 with the suggestion that she be served for the holiday meal. The family kept her instead, and that Christmas the president gave her an embroidered collar reading "White House Raccoon." Rebecca went with Grace Coolidge to the White House Egg Roll on April 18, 1927, and her fame says much about Coolidge, a famously reserved president who let his menagerie do the charming. When the family left in 1929, she went to the Rock Creek zoo to live among other raccoons.

The most politically useful dog in American history. Born on April 7, 1940, the Scottish terrier first went by Big Boy before Roosevelt renamed him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. In 1944, Republicans charged that Fala had been left behind in the Aleutian Islands and fetched at great cost, a story the FDR Library calls false. Roosevelt answered in a speech to the Teamsters, saying Fala "does resent them," and the Fala speech became a campaign landmark. MGM even made a 1943 short showing the wartime home front from Fala's point of view. He outlived his master, died on April 5, 1952, and was buried in the Rose Garden at Hyde Park near the Roosevelts' graves.

Camelot had a pony, and the public adored him. Caroline Kennedy's Macaroni was usually stabled in Virginia but often brought to the White House, where he roamed the grounds freely and, in snow, sometimes pulled a sleigh. He appeared with Caroline on the cover of Life and received thousands of fan letters of his own. He is often described as a gift from Lyndon Johnson, but the JFK Library says how he came to the Kennedy family is not known. The photograph here, taken at the West Wing Colonnade on June 22, 1962, with the president, Caroline and John Jr., shows why the image-conscious Kennedy White House let him be seen.

A Cold War gift with a space-age pedigree. Pushinka, whose name means "fluffy" in Russian, was a puppy of Strelka, one of the Soviet dogs that orbited the Earth in 1960 and came home alive. Seated beside Nikita Khrushchev at a 1961 state dinner in Vienna, Jacqueline Kennedy asked about Strelka's puppies, and Khrushchev later sent one, with her own Russian passport. The Secret Service checked her to make sure she was not bugged. Then the thaw went domestic. Pushinka and Caroline's Welsh terrier Charlie had four puppies, which the president jokingly called "pupniks." Few pets sum up their era so neatly: the space race, superpower suspicion and a family dog story, all in one small white mixed breed.

The beagles behind one of the most argued-over pet photos in presidential history. In 1964, while greeting a group on the White House lawn, Lyndon Johnson lifted Him up by his ears as the press looked on. The pictures set off protests from animal lovers across the country, and the episode is still the first thing many people remember about Johnson's dogs. It also captures Johnson himself: physical, unfiltered and always on display. The pair's ends were sad and very public. Her died at the White House in November 1964 after swallowing a stone, and Him was killed in June 1966 by a car while chasing a squirrel on the lawn. The photograph here shows Johnson walking both dogs with reporters in tow in August 1964.

The White House pet who became a bestselling author. Barbara Bush published "Millie's Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush" in 1990, telling White House life from the point of view of the family's English springer spaniel. The George H.W. Bush Library says it sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year and raised nearly $900,000 for her new family literacy foundation. Millie shows how a first lady could turn a family pet into a working cause. It was not Barbara Bush's first try at the format: in 1984 she had written "C. Fred's Story," about an earlier family dog, which raised $100,000 for literacy groups.

A stray who became the face of a presidency. Socks was a tuxedo cat who approached Chelsea Clinton in Arkansas and went home with her, then moved from the governor's mansion to the White House. He was a press favorite, so much so that the Clintons issued a warning after a cameraman held him up for a photo, and he made public visits to schools and nursing homes on a leash. His other claim to fame is his feud. When Buddy the Labrador arrived in 1997, Socks arched his back and hissed, and the two never got along. In 1998 Hillary Clinton published "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy," a book of children's letters to the pets. When the Clintons left office, Socks went to live with Bill Clinton's secretary Betty Currie, and he died in 2009 at age 20.

The second half of the White House's most famous pet rivalry. Buddy, a chocolate Labrador, arrived in the fall of 1997 at about four and a half months old. His breeder had called him Teddy, and Bill Clinton announced the new name at a December 1997 press conference. Buddy arrived during the most turbulent stretch of the Clinton years, and the photographs of him fetching balls on the putting green, like the one here from February 1998, show the warmer side the White House wanted seen. Socks never accepted him. Buddy went with the Clintons to Chappaqua, New York, where he was struck and killed by a vehicle on January 2, 2002.

The first presidential pet built for the internet. George W. Bush's Scottish terrier, born on September 30, 2000, starred in the "Barney Cam" videos the White House posted online, beginning in 2002 and running through "Barney Cam VII: A Red, White and Blue Christmas" in 2008. The official site credited him with nine "films." Earlier pets reached the public through newspaper photographers; Barney reached it through a White House web page, a small marker of the moment presidential communication moved online. A second Scottish terrier, Miss Beazley, joined the household on January 6, 2005.

A campaign promise with four paws. Barack Obama had told Malia and Sasha they could get a dog after the 2008 election, and Bo, a Portuguese water dog, was the result, a gift from Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The breed was reportedly chosen because Malia has allergies. Bo became a working member of the White House's public face, entertaining crowds at the annual Easter Egg Roll and sometimes joining Michelle Obama to welcome tourists. A family promise kept in public view says plenty about how personal the modern presidency had become. He died of cancer in May 2021.

Bo's livelier companion. Sunny, another Portuguese water dog, joined the family in August 2013, at the start of Obama's second term. Obama later remembered her as athletic, full of energy and protective of Bo, and noted that, despite her breed, she disliked getting wet. Sunny is a reminder that White House pets often outlive the administration that made them famous. She died in September 2026 at age 13, five years after Bo, and Obama said the family would miss her terribly.

The steady old dog of the Biden White House. Champ, a German shepherd, joined the family as a puppy during Joe Biden's years as vice president, so he already knew Washington when he moved into the White House in 2021 at an advanced age. His story is short and quiet, which is its point: a family dog who represented continuity in a period of upheaval. He died on June 19, 2021, at age 13, and the Bidens' statement said, "We love our sweet, good boy and will miss him always."

A White House first with a complicated ending. The Bidens adopted Major, a German shepherd, from the Delaware Humane Association in 2018, and in 2021 he became the first shelter dog to live in the White House. He was not the first rescue: that was Lyndon Johnson's Yuki, found abandoned at a Texas gas station. Major's arrival was celebrated as a statement about adoption, but the move was hard on him. In March 2021 he bit a Secret Service agent and, weeks later, a National Park Service employee on the South Lawn, and the Bidens sent him to live with friends in Delaware. The photograph shows him at an Oval Office window in January 2021, early in his stay.

The pet story that became a security story. Commander, a German shepherd, was a gift to Joe Biden from his brother James in December 2021. He went on to bite or attack Secret Service personnel again and again: records released in 2023 showed at least 10 incidents between October 2022 and January 2023, one requiring a hospital visit, and internal Secret Service documents later reported by CNN put the count at 24 or more. In October 2023 the first lady's office said Commander was "not presently on the White House campus while next steps are evaluated." It is an unusually modern entry, documented through public records rather than fond anecdotes, and it shows how a working building full of officers is a hard home for a young dog.

A campaign-trail recruit. Jill Biden first met Willow, a tabby, at a 2020 campaign stop in Pennsylvania, when the cat jumped onto the stage, and the Bidens later adopted her. She is named after Jill Biden's hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Willow brought a cat back to the White House after years of dogs, and her quiet presence made a contrast with the headlines about the family's German shepherds. Her origin is pure modern politics: a moment at a rally that turned into a household member.