ohmidog!

President Barack Obama’s daughters have settled on a pup — a six-month-old Portuguese water dog they’ve named Bo.

The dog is a gift from Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who owns several Portuguese water dogs. The Washington Post reported the story first in its online editions Saturday night.

“Bo’s a handsome little guy. Well suited for formal occasions at the White House, he’s got tuxedo-black fur, with a white chest, white paws and a rakish white goatee,” the Post reported.

The black-and-white puppy is is scheduled to make his public debut Tuesday.

Obama’s daughters chose the name Bo because first lady Michelle Obama’s father was nicknamed Diddley, after singer Bo Diddley, the Post said.

White House aides told The Associated Press that the office of the first lady arranged an exlusive deal on the dog story with the Post. They said the dog was not in the White House as of Saturday evening.

Celebrity Web site TMZ.com also reported Saturday that the Obamas would get a black-and-white Portuguese Water Dog from the same lineage as Sen. Ted Kennedy’s pets. TMZ said the six-month-old pet was named Charlie. Instantly, FirstDogCharlie.com went online.

Obama promised his daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, a puppy during the campaign.

According to the Washington Post report — you can find a version of it here — the family met the dog a few weeks ago at a secret White House session:

“The visit, known around the White House as ‘The Meeting,’ was a surprise for the girls. Bo charmed the first family, a source who was there said. He sat when the girls sat, stood when the girls stood. He made no toilet errors and did not gnaw on the furniture. Bo has, after all, been receiving lessons in good behavior from the Kennedys’ dog trainers. These lessons have been taking place at a secret, undisclosed location outside Washington.

“When the president walked across the room during the visit, Bo followed obediently.”

Apparently only a few days remain before the Obama family dog arrives at the White House – a Portuguese water dog, most sources seem to be saying.

That means we better run now with our list of the top 10 names for the First Family’s dog – assuming that, if they haven’t already, they’ll quickly come up with a name for the pup and not take another four months to get that accomplished.

Since we don’t know the gender we’ve included masculine, feminine and a few unisex names. Got a better suggestion? Send it along.

1. Ah-choo (or Gesundheit )– in honor of all the sneezing that, since the dog is allegedly hypo-allergenic, won’t be going on

2. Vasco – in honor of Vasco Bensaude, the Portuguese shipping magnate who kept the breed from going extinct.

3. Nottadoodle – Just to get back at those pushy Labradoodle fans who insisted the First Family choose that hybrid.

4. Monica – As a reminder that, when you’re in the White House, things can go down(hill) really quickly.

5. McCain – In honor of his opponent in the presidential race.

6. Stimulus, or Stimuli – We could use all we can get.

7. Hope – Maybe a bit audacious, but a nice name.

8. Omar – In honor of the president’s favorite character on “The Wire,” a gay stickup artist who steals from drug pushers to give to the poor.

9. Intruder – Just to make the Secret Service jump up every time anyone calls the dog.

10. Fin – In honor of the far-too-drawn-out, much-too-commented-upon drama of what the First Dog would be finally being over.

Sims Wyeth — intrigued by the prospect of a shelter dog moving into the White House — has penned a song called, simply enough, “First Dog Song.”

An excerpt:

“Now I’m in the shelter, sleeping on cement.
One day I’m gonna wake up in the house of the president.”

Wyeth is a former actor and educator who founded his own public speaking consultant company, Sims Wyeth & Co., in 1995.

He sent us email this week, notifying us he had posted his song on YouTube.

Wyeth is the owner of a one-year-old standard Poodle named Little Bear, who can be seen at the beginning and end of the video. His song is dedicated to his first dog, Roscoe.

A psychology professor in North Carolina has advised President Obama to look south for a First Dog — they’re friendlier, more abundant and make better pets, he says.

Hal Herzog, in an opinion piece in yesterday’s Washington Post, makes a couple of good points — and a couple with which we disagree. Chief among them is that the north, because of aggressive spay-neuter campaigns, has been left with a shortage of adoptable dogs.

“… The rush to pluck the reproductive organs from every household pet in America has been so successful that we may be running out of dogs,” he writes. ” … The more successful a region’s efforts are at controlling pet overpopulation, the more aggressive — and less adoptable — the dogs in their local animal shelter tend to be.”

As a result, he says, in the south — where spaying and neutering have been pursued less wholeheartedly and where shelter dogs are less likely to have rubbed elbows with nasty urban pit bulls — dogs are likely to be friendlier.

We disagree. Southern dogs aren’t any friendlier than northern dogs. Southern people? Maybe (Disclaimer: I’m from North Carolina). But not southern dogs.

For one thing, dogs in the south are certainly not any less likely to have been abused or neglected. And dogfighting operations are certainly not a northern phenomenon, nor strictly an urban one — as the cases of both Michael Vick, of Virginia, and Ed Faron, of North Carolina, attest.

Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C., is a nice guy (I interviewed him a while back) who knows his stuff – his stuff being societal attitudes and behavior toward animals.  

He’s correct in pointing out there is a greater supply of shelter dogs in the south, and a greater demand for them in north — and that there is an informal pipeline in operation, shuttling southern dogs north. He notes that the animal rescue group in his rural North Carolina county ships 200 dogs a year to shelters in Connecticut, and that, since 2004, the Rescue Waggin’ program operated by PetSmart has transported 20,000 abandoned dogs from states such as Tennessee and Kentucky to places, mostly northern, where they are snapped up by grateful owners.

But to proclaim that southern dogs are, like southern iced tea, sweeter is a leap — one that disregards why so many of them end up in shelters there in the first place and ignores why shelters and rescue groups up north accept them. It’s largely because they know what will happen to them if they don’t. No kill/low kill shelters are less prevalent in the south.

And to suggest that there might be a shortage of adoptable dogs, anywhere, is off the mark, especially since the economy’s recent downturn. As he points out, there were 24 million dogs and cats put to death in animal shelters in the United States in 1970. By 2007, the number had fallen to 4 million.

Four million is still a whole lot of dogs.

(Photo from mooncostumes.com)

OK, so we said there would just be three Obama dog recommendations.

But then we heard about this girl, currently lodged just up the road from the White House in Prince Georges County, Maryland.

Sydney is a 7-month old Ladradoodle who’s keepers say she is both beautiful and well-behaved, great with kids, cats and other dogs, housetrained, and already a skilled doggie door user.

She’s also crate trained, leash trained, knows her basic commands, has been spayed and has all her shots, according to Tamela Terry, president of the SPCA/Humane Society in Prince Georges County.

Sydney was surrendered by her former owners because they couldn’t take care of her any longer. She’s reportedly great in the car — she sits like a princess and gazes out the window.

“Sydney is a wonderful, easy-going dog and whoever adopts her will be lucky, lucky, lucky,” Terry wrote. “This beautiful girl could be the best thing to happen to the Obamas all year!”

Karma was a stray, a small white dog hit by a car and left to die on a Denver roadside.

She was scooped off the street by Denver Animal Control officers and taken to Harrison Memorial Animal Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a broken leg.

A rescue organization, Hope for Animals, took her in and Karma ended up, after surgery, with Mary Monnet, a volunteer and foster care provider. Monnet has cared for Karma, who’s no longer in the movement-restricting cone, for the past seven weeks.

It was Monnet who decided Karma would be the perfect dog for the Obama’s and, in Karma’s name, launched a letter-writing and public relations campaign to bring the dog to the first family’s attention.

She also started a blog that tells Karma’s story and includes the letters written to Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia — at least three so far. In those, she can get pretty poetic: ”Mom says having her arms around me is like hugging a cloud.”

Monnet knew Karma — being neither Labradoodle nor Portugese water dog — would be an underdog. The best guess is she’s a terrier mix. But Monnet decided to get her name out there anyway.

She’s gotten some TV coverage and hopes to enlist Denver’s mayor in getting word of the pup to the Obamas.

A 4th grader in Farmington, Pa., has offered Malia Obama his choco-doodle.

Zachary William Shiley, a student at Wharton Elementary School in Farmington, is offering a 6-week-old female Labradoodle puppy (emphasis on the labra) to the First Family.

The puppy, born Nov. 26, was the only offspring that survived the litter of an 11-year-old chocolate lab named — of all things — Hillary.

The father is a 1-year-old Labradoodle named — appropriately enough — Bullet.

Zachary Shiley told the Herald-Standard that the family has been calling the dog “Vegas” because his mother was in Las Vegas when Hillary became pregnant.

Apparently it wasn’t an intentional breeding, but, be that as it may, Hillary got her groove back, and now, the result of what happened in Farmington, if the Shiley’s have their way, won’t stay in Farmington, but head instead to the nation’s capital.

Zachary describes the puppy as full of energy, a little shy but “very smart and friendly.”

“We want her to have a good home, and what could be better than the White House… A dream come true,” Zachary wrote in his letter to Malia. “I almost forgot, the puppy is free,” he added. It was his mother’s idea to offer it to the Obamas, he said, but he’s all for it.

Included with the letter are two photographs — Zachary and the puppy, and the puppy with an American flag.

You gotta like this choice. Not only is it a gift from another nation (Canada), but it’s also a pup whose mama was rescued from a puppy mill.

The Winnipeg Humane Society seized about 50 Labradoodles from a puppy mill in southwestern Manitoba in December. The dogs were found living in their own feces, with urine burns and intestinal diseases. Of those 50, two have since given birth.

Humane Society Executive director Bill McDonald hopes that one of the Labradoodle pups — all of which are recovering nicely — will soon become part of the First Family.

McDonald  sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to consider offering Obama the puppy on his first visit to Canada.

McDonald thinks it’s a great idea, and we agree. In addition to all it would do for U.S.-Canada relations, it’s about as politically corrrect a choice as there could be, likely to appease all the animal welfare organizations that have urged Obama to get a shelter or rescue dog. This one is both — and a Labradoodle.

The province’s animal protection officers raided the puppy mill on Dec. 5. The dogs were taken from the owner and placed in an animal-care facility northeast of Winnipeg. Two of the rescued dogs were pregnant and recently gave birth to 11 pups.

Dear President Obama,

As one who has both contributed to and been bugged by the amount of publicity garnered by the dog you haven’t gotten; as one who believes the decision on what kind of dog your family should get is up to the Obama family alone; as one who finds all the unsolicited recommendations for First Dog annoyingly presumptuous, I have done my best to avoid falling into that trap.

Up to now, we at ohmidog! have stuck with just the facts — you going public while on the campaign trail with the decision to get a dog for your daughters once the election was over; you saying a shelter or rescue dog would be the family’s first choice; you announcing that, because of daughter Malia’s allergies, your family had narrowed the choices to two “hypo-allergenic” breeds, Labradoodle and Portugese water dog.

Up to now, we’ve kept our opinions, and our advice, to ourselves.

Today, though, in the interest of serving our country and its dogs, and because we figure you have other demands on your time, we break that policy and present three dogs we think are worthy of a shot at the White House – not breeds, mind you, but actual dogs.

They, I suspect, may be among dozens if not hundreds of dogs that have been or will be offered to the First Family.

I wish you the best of luck both in your family’s dog choice and in your presidency, and — because I believe your family dog is your family’s decision — I will leave it at that and withhold my advice, which would be to get all three.

Your friend,

ohmidog!