Paws and claws

Presidential pets run wild and tame at Clinton Center exhibit

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - Clinton Library curator Joy Secuban and the Hall of Presidential Pets exhibit. 031114
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - Clinton Library curator Joy Secuban and the Hall of Presidential Pets exhibit. 031114

“If you want a friend in Washington,” President Harry S. Truman said, “get a dog.”

The no-nonsense Missourian did not take his own advice. He and first lady Bess Truman “preferred to be a pet-free family,” according to the Truman Library and Museum of Independence, Mo. People gave them dogs - the Trumans gave the dogs away.

But most other presidents, their wives and children have kept pets in the White House, calling in a menagerie of canines and cats, ponies and parrots, sheep to graze on the lawn, even a well-fed raccoon.

These furred, finned and feathered Washington insiders are the subject of “Presidential Pets,” a display that continues through April 27 at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock.

“Pets are something in common between the different parties,” curator Joy Secuban says. A cynic might growl that presidents scratch their dogs’ ears to appear folksy, but Secuban takes a doggy grin at face value.

Presidents, she expects, “are just like us” when it comes to being pet lovers. Power doesn’t take the place of a pooch. Even Superboy, after all, had Krypto the Superdog.

The show is based on Julia Moberg’s children’s book, Presidential Pets: The Weird, Wacky, Little, Big, Scary, Strange Animals That Have Lived in the White House (Charlesbridge, 2012). The book deploys rhymes and cartoons to illustrate some of the least likely inhabitants of the nation’s animal house.

Thomas Jefferson doted on a couple of bear cubs, it reveals. John Quincy Adams stowed an alligator in the bathtub, and Andrew Jackson was proud of his cursing parrot.

The story goes that Jackson’s parrot, Poll, cussed such a storm at the great man’s funeral, the bird was ejected from the company of mourners. But he was only quoting Jackson.

The show highlights some of the more cuddly choices in a display of 15 poster-size, “hall of fame” photos and four showcases full of dog tags, cat bowls and other mutt-and-meow memorabilia.

“We tried to make it kid-friendly,” Secuban says - the pictures and pet belongings placed generally at a child’s eye level.

The idea was for “Presidential Pets” to offer a children’s counterpoint to the more serious exhibit that runs alongside it, “Spies, Traitors and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America.” Spies can be stool pigeons, rats, snakes and moles, but nobody wants to pet one.

But who does’t love a pet picture? - well, except for Truman, and even he, as a boy, had a stub-tailed cat named Bob. At least as many grown-ups as children appear to be taking in the pet show.

EARACHES AND CREAM BREAKS

Here is President Lyndon Johnson in one of the most controversial photos taken during his 1963-69 administration. The president is seen yanking on his beagle Him’s long ears.

The photo caption insists that, “Him enjoyed having his ears pulled.” The American people did not like it, though, and gave Johnson such a tail-cranking that he apologized to the whole country.

Relics that endure from the incident include a cartoon book, Him, that shows the dog hanging by his ears.

Ring-tailed hall-of-famer Rebecca was President Calvin and first lady Grace Coolidge’s pet raccoon. The state of Mississippi sent Rebecca to the White House in 1926, but not as a pet - for dinner.

A presidential rescue saved Rebecca from being an entree, and she became likely the finest-fed of all raccoons. While the country headed for hard times - the stock market soon to crash - Rebecca dined on shrimp, eggs and cream.

President Gerald Ford sent close friends a special photo of him and his golden retriever, Liberty. The dog signed it with an inky paw print. But as more and more people wanted a copy, the real paw gave way to a rubber stamp.

Warning to collectors: That seemingly paw-signed photo of Liberty for sale on the Internet just might be the worthless doggy version of an autopen signature.

Ford’s predecessor, President Richard Nixon, shared the White House with a poodle named Vicky and a Yorkshire terrier named Pasha. Nixon’s more famous dog was a cocker spaniel named Checkers.

Nixon ran into trouble as a candidate for vice president in 1952. In response to accusations of campaign wrongdoing, he delivered a TV address that became known as as the “Checkers speech.” To this day, an emotional spiel from a politician under fire is apt to be called a Checkers speech.

Nixon confessed that he had accepted a gift that maybe he should have declined according to the rules of campaign ethics: a dog for his daughters. “And you know,” he said, “the kids, like all kids, loved the dog.” Let people say what they will, the incensed candidate vowed, “we are going to keep it.” BUTTONS AND BO’S

Incumbent first lady Michelle Obama contributed to the Clinton Center’s pet show a replica of the Obama family’s Portuguese water dog, Bo, made of black and white buttons.

Newly elected President Barack Obama promised his daughters, Sasha and Malia, a dog in the White House. But Malia turned out to be allergic to most dogs. The Portuguese water dog is about as hypo-allergenic as bow-wows come, and the family accepted First Dog Bo as a gift from Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Opponents yapped in protest, since the president had said he expected to adopt a shelter dog. But the Obamas have since acquired a second Portuguese water dog, Sunny. The ancient breed is known for guarding ships, and for herding fish into nets.

The exhibit pays due respect to President U.S. Grant’s Shetland ponies; President George W. Bush’s Scotty, Barney, and President Theodore Roosevelt’s flopeared terrier, Skip.

Skip is representative of the dozens of pets and animals in general the Roosevelt family took in. Another of the president’s dogs, Pete, had a reputation for biting White House visitors including the French ambassador. Pete looks like a Boston bulldog in cartoons of the time, but nobody seems to have taken his picture. Chances are, he would have bitten the photographer.

Former Arkansas governor President Bill Clinton shares a quiet moment in the Oval Office with his retriever, Buddy, in another of the exhibit’s photos. But the star attraction is the Clintons’ black and white cat, Socks. Socks sometimes socked Buddy.

Socks burned the last of a cat’s nine lives in 2009, but endures as the object of plush toys and postcards, figurines and cat-patterned socks.

The show’s definitive artifact is Socks’ personal black mesh cat carrier with an engraved metal ID tag that reads: SOCKS c/o Chelsea Clinton 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Secuban points out a child’s valentine mailed to Socks, telling the cat’s status better than any history book could:

My name is Socks,

And I’m here to say

I’m “top cat”

In the USA.

The president may be commander-in-chief, but it takes a tail and whiskers to be the top cat.

Exhibit

Presidential Pets Through April 27, Clinton Presidential Center Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $7; retired military, college students and ages 62 and over, $5; children 6-17, $3; active military and children under 6, free.

(501) 374-4242

Style, Pages 49 on 03/23/2014

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