(Newswire.net — August 1, 2017) –According to the Presidential Pets Museum, the White House has been home to more than 300 animals, including a dozen dogs, horses and birds, as well as bears, tigers and even alligators.
An interesting fact is that the democratic presidents had on average six pets, while the republican averaged nine.
The most impressive ”collection” of pets was owned by the 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt. He had about 50 animals including, among other things, a badger, a barn owl and a one-legged rooster. But that’s not all, he also had a hyena, a coyote and a bear.
Thomas Jefferson was also fond of bears himself. As president of the United States, he received two grizzly bears as a gift.
Abraham Lincoln also had strange and unusual pets: Nanny and Nanko – a pair of goats.
Lincoln loved cats, and he could play with them for hours. Among cats and goats, Lincoln had rabbits and a horse, Old Bob, who was in Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession.
President William Henry Harrison had two pets – opossums, while Calvin Coolidge had a collection of animals, including many dogs, birds, a wallaby, lion cubs, a raccoon and a pygmy hippo named Billy.
However, this is not the end of the list of unusual pets of the White House presidential residents.
President Herbert Hoover had two alligators. His second son Allan Henry Hoover was gifted these animals, and according to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, the alligators were normally kept in a bathtub.
America’s 27th president, William Howard Taft, had a milk cow. In the Presidential Pet Museum you can
see a bell that belonged to the famous cow Pauline who grazed the White House lawn.
George W. Bush had a Scottish terrier named Barney Bush, the Clintons had a Labrador retriever named Buddy. Obama’s family had Portuguese water dogs named Bo and Sunny.
The last president in American history who did not have a pet was Andrew Johnson, who left office in 1869, and he is known as one of the two recalled US presidents.
Donald Trump is the first American president in the last 150 years who has no pet, but maybe he’ll change his mind and listen to Harry Truman, who had two dogs: a cocker spaniel Feller, and an Irish setter Mike, and who allegedly said: ”If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”