During the last days of President George W. Bush's presidency in November 2008, his Scottish terrier Barney bit a Reuters reporter, Jon Decker, on the finger, requiring the newsman to get it bandaged and take antibiotics for several days. Why was Barney so irritable? Maybe because he was cooped up on the White House grounds for eight years! "Barney had never walked in a neighborhood," Bush revealed in a speech he made to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan in May 2009. "He only knew the South Lawn [of the White House]."
April D. Ryan / AFP
In 1985, then President Ronald Reagan's exuberant dog Lucky, a Bouvier de Flanders, unceremoniously dragged the president across the White House Lawn, making the president look bad in front of a bevy of photographers and visiting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
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Described as a "clinically depressed poodle" by one newspaper, Sumo the Maltese snapped one night in January 2009 and bit his owner, the former French President Jacques Chirac. "The dog went for him for no apparent reason," said his wife, Bernadette Chirac. "We were already aware the animal was unpredictable and is actually being treated with pills for depression." Mr. Chirac was bitten so badly --- though Mrs. Chirac refused to divulge where --- that he had to go to the emergency room.
Daniel Velez, AFP / Getty Images
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Labrador retriever Koni sure knows how to party! In April 2009, she snuck into a room containing a table heaped with platters of cookies, cakes and biscuits meant to be served at a meeting of Russia's ruling party members and helped herself to the goodies --- every last crumb. "Koni ate everything," marveled one of Putin's bodyguards, who witnessed the whole incident and (wisely) decided not to intervene.
Alexei Druzhinin, AP
President Theodore Roosevelt's bull terrier, Pete, caused an international incident when the temperamental canine chased the visiting French ambassador Jules Jusserand down a White House hallway and bit him --- reportedly on the seat of his pants! When the French government complained, Pete was "exiled to the Roosevelt mansion at Sagamore Hill," according to the book, "The Pawprints of History" by Stanley Corent and Andy Bartlett.
AP
Old Whiskers, a goat belonging to the son of President Benjamin Harrison, had a mischievous streak. One day, Old Whiskers ran away with some of the grandchildren and the president had to chase after the old goat down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Library of Congress
Pol, a yellow-headed Amazon parrot belonging to President Andrew Jackson, had to be removed from his funeral due to her "crude language." She was reportedly cursing up a storm!
Gore Fiendus (Jerry Frausto), http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorefiendus/2894098434/
President Bill Clinton and his family famously had Socks the cat when they lived at the White House. When the Clintons later got a chocolate Labrador retriever named Buddy to join them at the presidential residence, the cat never took to him. Socks would hiss at Buddy and they had to be kept apart. Sadly, Socks passed away in February 2009 after a long bout with cancer, and Buddy died in January 2002 when he was hit by a car near the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York.
Greg Gibson
Time-Lapse Tortoise Noms Salad
