Bush and First Lady: Call It Puppy Love

Although President Bush has been tight-lipped about who will serve in his second-term Cabinet, the administration dropped the name Thursday of one addition to the White House family: Miss Beazley.

The 1-week-old Scottish terrier is a birthday gift from the president to his wife, Laura, who turned 58 on Thursday, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The black puppy is expected to arrive at the White House before Christmas and will join presidential pets Barney, another Scottish terrier, and India, a black cat.

Miss Beazley’s father is Barney’s half-brother. She was named after Uncle Beazley, a dinosaur in the children’s book “The Enormous Egg” by Oliver Butterworth.

Barney is so popular that his exploits are featured on the White House website, www.whitehouse.gov/barney, with daily photo updates and periodic video from the “Barney Cam” -- a dog’s-eye-view camera attached to his collar.

The Bushes’ previous dog, Spot, had a long political pedigree -- her mother, Millie, belonged to President George H.W. Bush and “wrote” a best-selling book about her time in the White House. Spot was born in the White House in 1989 and was euthanized in February.

Nearly every first family has had animals at the White House.

Among the more unusual were an alligator presented to John Quincy Adams by the Marquis de Lafayette, a pair of tiger cubs given to Martin Van Buren by the sultan of Oman, and a cow that lived on the White House grounds and produced milk for William Howard Taft.

More popular, of course, have been cats and dogs. President Clinton’s cat, Socks, was famous for feuding with Buddy, a chocolate Labrador retriever. President Lyndon B. Johnson evoked protests from animal lovers across the United States when he was photographed lifting his beagle Him by his ears.

Presidential pets even played a role in the 1944 presidential campaign, when Republicans circulated a story that Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent a Navy ship to retrieve his Scottish terrier, Fala, who was rumored to have been left behind on a trip to the Aleutian Islands, off the coast of Alaska.