Presidential Pets: What they bring to the US Presidency table

The
White House on Monday welcomed their newest guests from the Biden family and
they are President Joe Biden’s dogs– Champ and Major, First Lady Jill Biden’s
office tweeted.

Reviving
a long-standing tradition of having presidential pets, a tradition which was
broken under germophobic Donald Trump’s term, the Biden dogs became the first
pets to enter the White House since the Obama administration.

According to Politico, the Biden family got Champ, who is now 12, from a breeder in 2008 after Joe Biden was elected vice president of the US and Major, 2, became the first rescue dog to live in the White House after he was adopted from the Delaware Humane Association in 2018.

The Presidential pets, Champ and Major, officially referred as ‘First dogs of the United States’, according to Presidential Pets museum, are also being addressed  as ‘DOTUS’ as in Dog of the United States on social media and will hold a great significance in portraying Joe Biden’s presidency for the next four years. Here’s why?

Why are Presidential pets important?

The
significance of a pet’s existence in the White House can be traced back to George
Washington’s presidency, the first president of the US and an enthusiastic
breeder, who according to the Presidential Pets museum kept a number of stallions. A horse used during the American Revolution, Five French hounds, Rozinante,
Nellie Custis’s horse, a parrot belonging to Martha Washington and several
others. He has been monumental in building his image as a fatherly president
with warmth and charisma.

Apart
from this, Theodore Roosevelt who was the owner of horses, dogs, cats, rabbits
and Flying squirrel Guinea pigs among others, had also been in public eye,
according to White House Historical Association, and emerged as a more approachable
and tender political personality despite his hyper-masculinity.

The
most recent examples will include, Barack Obama and George Bush who continued the
tradition by sheltering Bo, a black Portuguese water dog  and a Scottish terrier, Barney respectively.

Presidents with a pet, are known to have a more humane political image than the ones who haven’t, Donald Trump being a case in point.

Meanwhile, First dog Major on January 17 received an ‘Indoguration’ on Zoom for charity.