White House Pets
Laddie Boy
Airedale
Specail Thanks for the photos and copy by:

The Smithsonion Magazine

The White House’s First Celebrity Dog
Whatever dog the Obama family chooses, the newest First Pooch has a legacy to live up to in Laddie Boy (resource story)

By Diane Tedeschi
Smithsonian.com,
January 22, 2009

Florence Harding and Laddie Boy. Photo from The Library of Congress

Laddie Boy poses on the White House lawn with a girl identified as “child movie queen, Mariana Batista.”

As First Dog, Laddie Boy was worthy of an official portrait.

A two-year-old Laddie Boy stands guard over a birthday cake made from dog biscuits. The cake was sent from the Caswell Kennels in Toledo, Ohio, where Laddie Boy was born. Included with the package was a letter allegedly penned by Laddie Boy’s father, Champion Tintern Tip Top, who wrote: “It is hard to realize what a famous family member we have in you, Laddie Boy. If we did not see your pictures which appear so often in the newspapers and magazines it would be hard for us to realize that you have grown to doghood and are no longer the roistering young blade that we bade good-bye to long ago.”

An unidentified female aviator engaged Laddie Boy in a game of fetch.

Durst annual parade. Laddie Boy and Isley Randall.

Laddie Boy gazes pensively through a White House door the day before Harding died in San Francisco.

Harding didn’t seem to mind at all that his dog had interrupted a White House photo shoot.

White House kennel master Wilson Jackson introduces Laddie Boy to Oh Boy, an English bulldog. Oh Boy was given as a gift to Florence Harding after she moved into the White House. But the dog was in poor health; despite being treated by a local veterinarian for several weeks, Oh Boy later died.

A life-size sculpture of Laddie Boy is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (the artifact is not currently on display). Crafted by sculptress Bashka Paeff, the statue is made from more than 19,000 pennies donated by newsboys.


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