warren harding Archives - Presidential Pet Museum

LEFT: Florence Harding and Laddie Boy. Photo from The Library of Congress.
RIGHT: 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 2-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 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 President Warren Harding died in San Francisco.

President 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.

Special thanks for the photos and text by: The Smithsonian Magazine; The White House’s First Celebrity Dog (resource story); by Diane Tedeschi, Smithsonian.com, January 22, 2009