This is one of several articles I found on the web. Seems we were all set up by the bull-cocky that the Obamas were actually looking for a shelter dog. The leading PWD breeding organization was never contacted by the White House or were any of the area shelters.
The Obamas led us on for six months and put a Kennedy plant into the White House.
By Christie Keith
Texas Portuguese Water Dog breeder Martha Stern is no stranger to placing her puppies with the famous and powerful. She bred Sen. Ted Kennedy’s beloved dogs Splash, Sunny and Cappy. And now it turns out she and her husband, Art, are also the breeders of the new First Dog, Bo — or Amigo’s
The news started leaking two days ago, when gossip site TMZ published a story that Sen. Kennedy would be giving the Obama girls the puppy their father had promised them when he was on the campaign trail. The breeder wasn’t identified, but the puppy was said to be of the “same lineage” of the Kennedy dogs.
I’d spoken to Stern a couple of months earlier, when rumors were flying that she’d sold a puppy to the Obamas. The basis for the rumor seemed to be not much more than the fact that she was the breeder of the Kennedy’s dogs, the Obamas had expressed an interest in the breed, and there was a puppy in the same litter from which Sen. Kennedy had gotten his newest puppy with the registered name of “Amigo’s Change to Believe In.”
At the time she said the rumor wasn’t true. “I did have what I called my ‘Hope’ litter, and all of them are named Hope or Change, or something like that, but no, they did not…” she told me then. “I would have loved to place a puppy with them. I think.” She paused, then laughed. “I’m not sure. Let me ponder on it a little bit.”
I left her a message yesterday, wanting to find out what the story was now. When I heard back from her this morning, she told me this had all transpired after we talked.
“Yeah, I called the girl who has Amigo’s Change to Believe In, and she laughed and laughed,” Stern said. “She’s been a huge Obama supporter from the beginning. She said she made 1500 phone calls for him during the campaign. She told me, ‘He can have my money, but he can’t have my dog.’”
While the Obamas had wanted to adopt a rescue or shelter dog, they also had their hearts set on a Portuguese Water Dog. This was partly because they fell in love with the Kennedy’s dogs, and partly because Malia Obama suffers from allergies.
Portuguese Water Dogs, like their Poodle relatives and a few other breeds, have what’s known as a “single” coat. These coats shed less than the more common canine double coat, and so less dander gets deposited in the environment. This sometimes makes them less of a problem for people with allergies.
It was Sen. Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, who heard about a littermate of Cappy’s in
“Usually that works out all right,” said Stern. “But not this time. This little puppy was quite rambunctious, and I think he kind of barreled in there and tried to nurse off the older dog when he first got there. And she said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ She did not understand this at all, and just lay around growling at him.”
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/obama_disappoints_animals_props_up_breeders
http://dreamdogsart.typepad.com/the_obamas_dog/2009/04/is-this-the-obamas-new-dog.html
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