Hillary Clinton — former U.S. senator, former Secretary of State, wife of a former president, and now a frontrunner for president herself in 2016 — currently shares two dogs with her husband, Bill. Here are their stories.
Tally
Hillary Clinton got her toy poodle mix, Tally, after she fell hard for one belonging to a neighbor, according to an aide. “She just kept saying, ‘I want a little dog!’” the aide said, according to People.
Tally is more than a companion to the Clintons; she’s also a cheerleader for senior pet Seamus. “We got [Tally] to keep the Labrador company and to try to get the Labrador to be more energetic,” Hillary Clinton told People in 2011. “And she’s, like, bouncing all the time. And so we go on these walks and it’s great because the — our Lab, Seamus [now deceased], sort of starts off kind of like an old man, just kind of very ambling and slow. And Tally, our poodle, is like, jumping up and down and then Seamus gets some energy and off he goes.”
Despite some media reports to the contrary, we believe Tally is the black-and-white dog, the smaller of the Clinton dogs. She looks like a shih tzu/toy poodle mix, which we suppose would make her a “shih-poo.”
Here’s an August 2012 photo of the Clintons with Seamus and the dog we think is Tally. In other photos we’ve seen, this dog appears to have a docked tail.
Our best guess at Tally’s age: 6 years old.
Photo: Hillary Clinton with a dog in August 2015. We think this is Maisie.
Maisie
Maisie, the newest four-legged companion in the Clinton household, is a “curly-haired mutt,” as The New York Times puts it. She joined the family a few years ago, possibly in 2013. We believe Maisie is the medium-sized, solid-color, super-cute dog shown pictured above. She also appears to be a poodle mix.
Here are some photos of Bill Clinton and his son-in-law taking Maisie and Tally (again, we’re not certain which is which) to the dog run at Madison Square Park in New York City.
Unfortunately, we don’t know much about Maisie, but we do have a wild guess about where the name came from: Hillary Clinton is a big fan of the bestselling novel Maisie Dobbs, about a World War I field nurse turned detective. If we’re right about the name, and Hillary Clinton is reading this, maybe she’ll grant us an interview so we can learn more about these fascinating, possible future presidential pets!
What About Seamus? Sadly, He’s Passed On.
Born in February 2002, about a month after Bill Clinton’s other chocolate Lab, Buddy, was killed by a car, Seamus lived with the Clintons for many years before dying recently, apparently of old age, according to The New York Times.
Hillary Clinton bought Seamus, then a 4-month-old puppy, from a breeder in Maryland and presented him to her husband as a Father’s Day gift in June 2002. “He was surprised with the dog when he woke up on Father’s Day,” a spokesman told the Associated Press. “The dog helped wake him up.”
The puppy was no doubt a great comfort to the Clintons, who were still grieving the sudden, tragic loss of Buddy. Earlier in 2002 Bill Clinton had called Buddy’s death “by far the worst thing” to happen to him since he left the White House.
Seamus was a great nephew of Buddy, and his name itself was pretty much the definition of “replacement.”
Don’t Miss: All about Bill Clinton’s dog Buddy and the famous Socks the cat. Also, we answer the question: Does Donald Trump have any pets?
We need to bring attention and shame to the culture that keeps dogs outside and confined in kennels and chained to dog houses.
It is a terrible behavior that has been accepted as a cultural difference.
It is torture to the dog and any person whom is aware of its’ suffering but can’t help because it is a legal practice.
Lets please put a stop to this unloving practice
Our President and his family have the ability to do this and help so many dogs that suffer in the hood.
Please ask them to put public awareness ads with pictures of the obamas and their dogs, and specific shaming of people that have dogs chained up outside.