Animal Insting

Ha!  You probably thought I was going to talk about the first wolf that got tamed enough to be called a dog, but no!  I'm going to talk about the First Dog, by which I mean the dog that was adopted by the First Family of the United States, the Obamas.

Well, the First Dog is named Bo, and here's his official portrait:

Bo was six months old when he went to live at the White House in April, so that means he is a whole year old now.  There was lots and lots of stuff in the papers and on TV and on the internet about what kind of dog the Obamas were going to get, but then after they finally got a dog, it seemed like nobody ever talked about him again, which is not fair at all, in my opinion.  Because a dog is a Very Important part of any family, so Bo should be in the headlines at least once a week!

Bo's registered name is Amigo's New Hope.  Before he went to live with the First Family, he used to belong to some other family.  This means that The First Family is actually his second family.  We don't know why Bo's first family, which was not The First Family, decided not to keep him.  His name used to be Charlie, but then Sasha and Malia named him Bo.  They chose this name because they have a cousin with a cat named Bo.  This is pretty shameful, if you ask me -- to name a dog after a cat!  I am not sure how Bo has managed to deal with the humiliation of this.  It's just this kind of thing that the reporters at the White House should be telling us about, but I guess they are too busy talking about dumb stuff like war and the economy.

Supposedly, President Obama was going to go running with Bo every day, and Mrs. Obama was going to go walking with Bo every day, and Sasha and Malia were going to play with Bo and also pick up his poop.  But we don't know for sure if all of these things are actually happening or not, which is another result of bad reporting.

Anyway, Bo is a Portuguese Water Dog, which can be abbreviated PWD.  This kind of dog has a curly coat sort of like a poodle, but it is a different breed than a poodle, so you shouldn't get the two kinds of dogs confused.  Also a PWD can have a wavy coat instead of a curly coat, but poodles can only have curly coats.

As you can maybe guess from the name, Portuguese Water Dogs come from Portugal, which is a country in Europe that is kind of stuck onto one side of Spain.  The Portuguese fishermen used these dogs in their work because they actually like to swim.  I think that no dog in his right mind should like getting all wet, which is what happens when you go swimming.

PWDs were crazy enough to not only go swimming, but to help the fishermen by herding fish into their nets and by retrieving stuff out of the water and by carrying messages from one boat to another.  Of course, now that cell phones have been invented, maybe the Portuguese fishermen don't have to use dogs to deliver messages.

The hair on a Portuguese Water Dog will just keep growing and growing because PWDs don't shed much.  This can be a problem because the hair gets all matted and also it gets in the dog's eyes and then he can't see where he's going and might walk off a cliff or something.  So if you have one of these dogs, you have to brush it and get its hair cut every couple of months.  This is a lot of trouble, if you ask me, so it is better to have a basenji because they have short hair that is easy to take care of.

Oh, and here's one other interesting thing about PWDs.  They are pretty friendly with everybody, but they usually bond really close to just one family member.  Also they don't like being left alone for long periods of time.  We don't know if Bo has bonded more with one person in the Obama family than with others.  Again this is due to lack of good reporting on this important subject.

President Obama just won a big, important thing called the Nobel Peace Prize.  He will get a bunch of money because of winning this prize, and he says he will give it to charity.  I hope he will give some of the money to some group that is helping homeless animals.  I think this would make Bo feel very happy and proud of his dad.