(L-R: President Harry Truman, his rental home and Feller the Presidential Cocker Spaniel).
If the lease did not specifically prohibit it, I would be looking for a dog. That is what President Truman said about DC, right? “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
It would be a good time for it. We have emerged from the Dog Days of August here, and the pooches will be more comfortable in the temperate beginning of the week. It will get sweltering again, probably a couple times before the leaves turn colors and then bury the parking lot at Big Pink.
I was desperate to avoid what is happening in the media, but I got a note from a pal saying there had been a terror-inspired attack down in Roanoke, VA, last night and I wanted to know more. I was soon inundated with strange news but the attack was on News-and-Weather-on-the-Eights. You will be happy to know that the weather will be great this week and we can keep the windows open. As to the attack, it was being reported as “motive unknown,” except that the perp accompanied his assault by shouting “God is Great!” He attacked a couple returning to their apartment building with a knife, and injured them both. The victims apparently inflicted enough damage on the attacker that when he showed up at the ER the police arrested him.
I personally am of the belief that a good dog would provide deterrence from this sort of thing. Particularly if the pooch is a large size canine with ingrained protective tenancies. That was not true of President Truman’s dog Feller, but the Truman family preferred to be pet free and gave the cocker spaniel pup to the the presidential physician, Dr. Graham. It would seem that with him the “Buck stopped here,” but the pets could move on.
I started to wonder about the current candidates and their pets. The Clintons currently share three dogs: “Seamus,” the First Pet and Chocolate Lab, “Tally,” a toy poodle mix with whom the Candidate is most enamored, and Maisie, the junior dog and a “curly haired mutt.”
Mr. Trump either does- or does not- have a dog named “Spinee.” It is entirely appropriate that his status as a dog owner is an enigma along with everything else. He may share President Truman’s opinion and actual predilection about pets- nice in concept but too hard in practice.
(Presidential dogs Bo and Sunny at rest).
I had the Socotra House summer interns scour the Internet for additional citations- they told me the irascible and incendiary Bernie Sanders was resolute in not employing any service animals. The Obama family famously has Bo and Sunny, the Portuguese Water Poodles. And what is more, one of the Interns made the astonishing claim that Mr. Truman had plenty of friends in Washington, most of whom played poker, and that he never said the quote about canines.
I was thunderstruck. That had always been my favorite Harry-ism. The proof was in the citations. The intern held her ground. “In 1949, a newspaper columnist named E. V. Durling asserted the following: “Why doesn’t Truman have a dog? It is my understanding Truman does not have a dog because Mrs. Truman thinks dogs are too much trouble to care for.”
I shooed the interns back to the bustling current news center at Socotra House. I made a steeple of my fingers and pondered what it all meant. There is no evidence that Truman employed a dog as a surrogate friend while he was in the White House, or at the Winter White House in Key West. But by the end of the decade, his association with the phrase had slipped into the popular lexicon. Time magazine in 2008 (I had no idea they were still in business) attributed the quote to corporate raider Carl Icahn and was later immortalized by the character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street.”
The Gordon Gekko character (created by screenwriters Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone) said it this way: “You win a few; you lose a few; but you keep on fighting. And if you need a friend, get a dog. It’s trench warfare out there, Pal.”
The quote appears to have been malleable over the years, with “Washington” being replaced by “Life,” “Hollywood” “This World.” In fact, it may actually have originated with that Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know Lord Byron, who observed “nobody need want a friend who can get a dog.” It is well documented that the Poet, Lover and Adventurer who once swam across the Hellespont from Asia to Europe, had plenty of friends.
(Reproduction of a detail of a portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips).
Based on a survey of the literature, I can’t come to any substantive conclusion. The Clintons have multiple dogs. Mr. Trump either does or doesn’t. Should the unlikely outcome of his election occur, my recommendation is that he seriously should consider getting one. A big one.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra