Introducing: Bo Obama

A website called First Dog Charlie went up on Saturday (April 6) purporting to show the new Presidential First Dog, a Portuguese Water Dog named “Charlie.” It sure looks like the same dog the Obamas were shown getting to know in a photo in the Washington Post on Easter Sunday. Apparently the Obamas wanted to delay the announcement until Tuesday, when the pup is supposed to move into the White House, but the event has generated so much attention worldwide that it was probably inevitable that the news would get ‘broken’ (or… housebroken?) before the due date.

The Post reports that the First Puppy is a gift from water dog-loving Senator Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts, and that the Obama daughters Sasha and Malia immediately re-named him “Bo.” Not “Beau,” which is a great name for a poodle and my family had just such a giant mutant mountain poodle too, once. Probably sounded too French. Seems that Michelle Obama’s father was known in-house by the fond knickname of “Diddly.” As in… Bo Diddly, get it?

Bo is primarily black, with a white chest, white paws and a white goatee. They call this “tuxedoed,” but basically he looks a lot like a parti poodle. In fact, poodles and Portuguese Water Dogs share an ancestry that dates well back into the time of the Teutonic tribes of northern Germany and rural Russia, when they were famed for their prowess at hunting, retrieving and… you guessed it… riding comfortably on boats of all description. In the provinces the dogs were bred and developed for hunting and in France, for warfare, while in Portugal they took to the sea along with their masters.

The tuxedoed look will no doubt come in handy for Bo in his job of being First Dog and in charge of meet-and-greets of various high level officials, ambassadors and leaders from all over the world.

Here’s to you, Bo! May your life with this lovely family be long and multi-storied.

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Time for A Presidential Poodle!

Barack Obama has been elected to be the next President of the United States! And, as is a standard question for all newly elected Presidents with a lovely wife and children to share the White House with, Obama was asked what kind of puppy he was planning to get for the title of “First Dog.”

And yes, it’s going to have to be a dog, because 10-year old First Daughter Malia has allergies she can’t escape with a cat, but could easily avoid with just the right kind of dog. Plus, as Obama mentioned, the family is going to want a shelter puppy…

“But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me,” said Obama, in an apparent self-depreciating reference to his mixed race heritage. “So whether we’re going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.”

Yet a surprising number of shelter dogs are purebreds. We got our beloved giant mutant mountain poodle Beau (pictured at top) at our county’s animal shelter when he was 6 months old, and his pedigree was a whole lot more impressive than mine! A size-large standard poodle with your basic kennel cut would make a delightful First Dog!

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Rescue Poodle Birthday Bash

This video comes via the PawsRescue channel at YouTube, and it follows a poodle mom and her nine 10-day old pups from their rescue to their first birthday bash. Looks like everyone found great homes!

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What It Takes to Be A Service Dog

In a previous post and subsequent short videos, we’ve looked at what service dogs can do for people, and a little bit about how they’re trained. Standard poodles are of course a favorite for the service sector due to their high intelligence and trainability, and also for their hypo-allergenic coats. The Australian Labradoodle was originally bred specifically for being service dogs, combining the best qualities of the best dogs.

Not every dog – poodle, labrador, shepherd – is cut out to be trained as a service dog, and most service dog training organizations have strict criteria by which puppies are judged, and programs for finding good homes for all the dogs that don’t quite make the grade for one reason or another. So I thought in this post we should look at the specific criteria used to choose the perfect dogs for training.

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What Can a Trained Poodle Do?

Back when we’d first adopted our beloved Beau the black standard from the local animal shelter [A Poodle and His Clown] we were working as directors of a state funded after school program for at-risk and adjudicated young teenagers (12-14) at a local Jr. High school.

Beau was just 6 months old when we got him. He was about 9 months old when a volunteer from the local police force (good outreach) volunteered his time to help us with the kids. He turned out to be a great asset, kept most of the adjudicated kids out of trouble from then on by being their friend and mentor. One afternoon he brought a couple of beautiful German Shepherds – the ‘real’ shepherds that surprise people. Smaller than expected, low-slung in the rear. Seems he’d been promoted to K9 training and these were his babies. He’d trained dogs when in the military, our town was just starting a K9 program. His dogs were the same age as Beau, who as it happened had been to the vet that day so ended up at the school with us for the program that day.

We’d told our young policeman about Beau, of course, and he’d mouthed some platitude he’d learned in the Army about big poodles being excellent service/K9 dogs, but he’d never actually seen or met one. The moment he saw Beau – who was quite hairy at the time and already bigger than either of those shepherds – it was love at first sight. All that he’d heard about giant poodles suddenly clicked in his mind, and within 15 minutes he had Beau joining his pups in the “Obedience Show-Off Game.” He offered to include Beau in his training course for free, just wanted to work with him.

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A Poodle and His Clown

It was about six months after our beloved Uncle Bob had to be put down, all the way to summertime and our busy party and picnic schedule as clowns. We hadn’t intended to get another dog, as we had rescued a little-girl mutt puppy who had been unceremoniously dropped off on the road near our driveway. We actually live at the proverbial “end of the road,” bordering the National Forest where irresponsible people come to dump off their unwanted dogs, cats, puppies and kittens. I call it “Evil Stepfather Syndrome.”

They usually die of getting hit by a car, or of starvation, or end up getting shot when they raid a neighbor’s chicken coop or trash looking for something – anything – to eat. We’d kept this puppy because she was so small, and we were dog-less. Not like someone’s big old hound or Doberman that we’d rescue if we could and turn in to the shelter. You never know why people dump their dogs. And hounds will just follow their noses out of your life in no time anyway.

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How’d That High-Dollar Dog End Up Here?

Poodle Rescue Stories

We purchased only one poodle puppy in our long career of being “Poodle People.” That was Kenya, our female black. The rest were rescues, and we’re currently on the list for more. How we managed to end up with these beautiful, dearly beloved dogs makes for some fantastic stories.

It was 1986 when Uncle Bob came into our life. A good friend was driving her contractor husband’s pickup truck toward town from Jacksonville Beach in a driving rainstorm one non-descript north Florida afternoon. In those days Beach Boulevard had entire stretches of undeveloped woodland in between intensive gated community housing and apartment complexes, strip malls and such. Just across the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway the vehicles ahead were slamming on their brakes and sliding in the water, so she slowed way down while trying to catch a glimpse of what was causing the panic.

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