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President
Barack Obama and family introduce their new dog
Bo to the media on the South Lawn of the White
House in Washington on Tuesday. Barry H. Landau,
who has known about 25 White House dogs since
the Eisenhower administration, has given the
Obamas dog advice and it's not unreasonable, he
says, to assume he might be meeting Bo in the
not-too-distant future .
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NEW YORK - Of all Barry
H. Landau's anecdotes about his friendships with
presidential dogs — and trust us, he has lots of 'em
— perhaps the best is the one about the time the
Clinton White House called to postpone his playdate with
Buddy.
Yes, Landau is both human
and an adult — a 60-year-old author, presidential
historian, former White House protocol officer and
memorabilia collector. But so enamored is he of dogs,
and so well connected to a succession of presidents,
that he had an appointment for a South Lawn romp one day
with Buddy, Bill Clinton's Labrador retriever.
Logistics got in the way,
though, and hence Clinton secretary Betty Currie's
apologetic voice mail left at the Smithsonian
Institution, where Landau was doing research: "I'm
sorry, but we'll have to reschedule Mr. Landau's
playdate with Buddy."
Not surprisingly, this is
a happy week for Landau, with the new Obama family dog,
Bo, joining a White House tradition that dates to George
Washington. It's one that Landau feels is invaluable to
a presidency.
"Having a dog just
humanizes a president," he says. "It completes
the picture. It's something people can relate to."
And Landau has related to
the best of them. He's known about 25 White House dogs
since the Eisenhower administration. Among the
presidential-pooch memorabilia in his Manhattan
apartment are matching orange inaugural dog coats worn
by LBJ's twin beagles, Him and Her, and a photo of
Landau kissing Clipper, JFK's German shepherd.
Landau's dog tale begins
in 1958, at age 10. He had been invited to the
Eisenhower White House following a chance encounter with
the first lady. The president let Landau frolic with his
beloved Weimaraner, Heidi.
A history of high-profile
canine encounters had begun.
The Kennedy White House
was a virtual Noah's Ark — a cat, a canary, a rabbit
named Zsa Zsa, parakeets, hamsters, ponies (including
Caroline's famous Macaroni), and a number of dogs.
Landau, who had gone to summer camp with members of
Jackie Kennedy's family, got to know them all, including
Pushinka, offspring of a Soviet space dog.
Then came LBJ's beagles.
And Richard Nixon's famous Checkers, whom Landau met
during his vice presidential campaign. But it was
another Nixon dog, King Timahoe, who was Landau's true
friend.
"I used to take him
to Serendipity when the president was in New York,"
he says, referring to a Manhattan restaurant.
"They'd give him an extra-long hot dog."
It was Gerald Ford who
hired Landau as assistant chief of protocol in the White
House — actually the third time he had worked at the
mansion in various capacities — and Landau thinks it
was because of a dog. At an Iranian Embassy event, the
Shah of Iran was amused when Landau barked as the
ambassador's dog came by. As Landau recounts it, the
Shah told Ford he would like to speak to the barking
guy.
Jimmy Carter didn't have
a dog, but Landau bonded with the Reagans, for whom he
continued to do freelance protocol work, over Rex (a
King Charles spaniel) and Lucky (a Bouvier). He was also
deeply fond of Millie, the pooch from the first Bush
administration.
And then there was Buddy,
whom Clinton acquired in 1997, not long before the
Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. "Buddy was a true
comfort to him," says Landau, who once had Tiffany
dog tags made for the pooch. "They went through a
lot together."
Landau has a handwritten
letter from Clinton, sent just after the dog was killed
by a car in 2002. And Landau says Clinton also
commiserated with him over the illness of the author's
own poodle, Topper, actually accompanying him to the vet
once.
Snapshots of Landau
cuddling Barney, Miss Beazley and Spot, the George W.
Bush dogs, fill an envelope in one of Landau's drawers.
While he's cagey about
his contacts with the new president, Landau allows that
he's given the Obamas dog advice. It's not unreasonable,
he says, to assume he might be meeting Bo in the
not-too-distant future.
But lest one assume
Landau befriends only presidential dogs, think again.
"He walks around the city with dog biscuits in his
pocket, even though he doesn't have his own dog
anymore," says Larry Bird, Landau's friend and a
curator of American history at the Smithsonian.
And one of Landau's most
impressive dog tales concerns not a president at all,
but a queen.
In London in the 1960s,
he met Queen Elizabeth II (yes, there are photos of
that, too) and couldn't resist asking to meet her famed
Corgis. As Landau tells it, his wish was the queen's
command. The next day he found himself on a playdate at
Windsor Castle.
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