Top 8 Presidential Pets (3 of 5)

Pushinka the Four-legged Diplomat

At an important diplomatic summit in Vienna, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy sat next to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the state dinner, and mentioned she had heard Strelka, a Soviet dog who had famously orbited Sputnik 5 and lived to bark about it, had recently given birth to puppies.

A few weeks later, Soviet handlers delivered one of Strelka’s offspring, Pushinka, to the White House as a gift to First Daughter Caroline Kennedy. But to be safe, Pushinka was taken to the Walter Reed Medical Center to make sure the blasted Commies hadn’t implanted a bugging device under her skin. She was cleared and went on to have puppies of her own with Charlie, JFK’s beloved Irish Settler.

Dixie and Tabby

Honest Abe was famous for being a dog person (and for sporting a fantastic beard, we’d concede). However, when he first became president, the Lincolns made the difficult decision to leave their furry friend Fido with trusted family friends to spare him the noise, crowds and chaos that came with being the president’s dog. To fill the void, the Lincolns were given the gift of two cats, Dixie and Tabby, by Secretary of State William Seward. The president instantly became a cat person, and during the Civil War when he needed a stress break, he would put them on his lap so he could stroke and chat with them. Of course, we aren’t suggesting that cats are the reason the Republic was saved…or are we?