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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