Many animals adorned the Lincoln White House despite Mrs. Lincoln’s lack of pleasure in them. The first recorded litters to be born in the White house were on the same day when Tad’s dog and Willies cat both gave birth at the same time. With a family of five boys to raise, there were always animals about, but Tad and Willie, the youngest captured more animals tales in history than the rest of the family. Willie took sick with pneumonia and died, and this left the Lincoln family especially little Tad in deep mourning and shock. Several months later, after other attempts to cheer Tad up, two goats, Nanny and Nanko, came to live with him at the White House and went into the history books as heroes. Tad was a typical rambunctious boy and looked for ways to have fun with his pet goats. He often riled his very stern mother, Mary Lincoln who did not look upon several of his stunts kindly. The episode that got Tad in the most trouble was when he hooked up the fun loving goats to some hall furniture, chairs to be exact and road the chairs down the great hallway while the aides and assistants looked on. The recorded word has it, that their father, Abe, was amused by his creativity, but Tad was given down time by his mother. Sadly, Nanny Goat wandered off when Tad and his mother were visiting in Vermont and while never seen or heard from again, a long held suspicion is that the gardener may have assisted in the disappearance as the goats were notorious for smashing the flower beds. For some reason Nanny was often able to escape from the stable and make a beeline for the flower bed, so Nanko stayed on, better behaved and content. Their famous family dog, Fido, of mixed ancestry stayed behind in Springfield when the Lincolns went to Washington. But the dog was still very much a part of the family. A formal portrait of this dog can be seen on exhibit at the Lincoln Museum and Library.