President Joe turned up with his two German Shepherds, Champ and Major, as soon as the pet-less Trumps moved out.
Champ is 13, which is getting on for a dog; he’s been with the Bidens since 2008. Major is much younger – he joined the family in 2018 just as Joe was making his run.
Quite a fuss was made at the time about Major’s origins – I am told he is the first “shelter dog” to live in the White House. A shelter dog, as the Americans like to say is, in fact, a rejected dog, a rescued dog – a poor mutt found languishing at the Pound because someone didn’t want him.
Naturally this raises a host of questions in the mind of a blue-blood, pedigree hound such as myself: were his manners not up to scratch? Did he jump on every visitor and shove his nose in the wrong place? Or was he inclined to rip peoples’ arms off?
Well, it didn’t take long for him to show his colours and take a piece out of a White House staffer – it was “a biting incident” they said, after Major was “surprised with an unfamiliar person.”
Well, you are going to get plenty of unfamiliar persons hanging about the White House. The victim was probably a secret service agent trying to protect the President from a growling dog. But they didn’t say.
It wasn’t a good start, that’s for sure and the two dogs were shipped back to Delaware on the first available big green helicopter for counselling. The First Lady said the dogs weren’t used to “elevators and many eyes on them on the South Lawn” so there was some adjustment required.
She forgot to mention that, Joe tripped and sprained his ankle while playing with Major. He got rid of the funny boot in time to be sworn in. You’d have to say the mutt is more trouble than he’s worth.soon after he was elected,
What would they expect anyway, trying to bring a mongrel dog into the White House?
The Boss was looking at me disapprovingly; a lecture would follow. “Your evident sense of superiority is not merely unjustified, General - it is unedifying.”
“There’s a lot to be said for cross-breeds and mongrels, you know,” he said, looking at me as if I could improve in some way. As if!
“Cross-breeds often get rid of the imperfections that you can find in pedigree dogs,” he went on, “because the pedigree breeders often try to hard to amplify breed characteristics to win dog shows and take chances on in-breeding.”
“Look at your mate over there,” he said, pointing at the Golden Leave-it-There, whose gross disloyalty I talked about last week. “Despite his mum being an Australian champion, he needed both hips replaced before he was two.”
The Boss had that wild look in his eye implying he might have been better to take the Leave-it-There on a walk into the bush, along with his .22 rifle – but caught himself from pursuing that unworthy thought. He fixed on me instead.
“As for you, General, you exhibit both the drawbacks of a mongrel – unpredictable behaviour, a sly shiftiness when beyond my reach – as well as those of a noisy, disobedient, mess-making pedigree dog. And you’re a glutton to boot, which could come from either side.”
Where did that come from, I thought? Just because I expressed an opinion, I was suddenly cancelled. Seems to be the fashion of the times.
I’d best offer my services to Joe. Woof!
