FAMOUS DOGS IN HISTORY

Smart, loyal, and loving









Many of them are White House dogs, made famous by their politically powerful owners. Some are movie and television stars. But some are famous in their own right for acts of heroism, faithfulness, and devotion.

BO OBAMA :

Bo, the Portuguese water dog owned by the Obama family, is perhaps most famous for being mentioned in President Barack Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech.“Sasha and Malia … I love you both more than you can imagine,” Mr. Obama said. “And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us … to the White House.”The Obamas took into consideration daughter Malia’s allergies when selecting the Portuguese Water Dog — it is considered a hypoallergenic breed.

PAL, THE ORIGINAL LASSIE :

Though Lassie is really a fictional character, she’s arguably the most famous dog ever. The original Lassie character was played by a Rough Collie named Pal. 10 generations of Pal’s direct descendants have portrayed Lassie in film and on television, starting in 1943 and most recently in 2007.

Fun Fact: Although Lassie the character has always been female, she has always been portrayed by male Collies, who retain a thicker coat in summer and look more Collie-ish on television. Also, male Collies are larger, and human child actors could play alongside them for longer before outgrowing them.

SINBAD, UNITED STATES COAST GUARD :

Sinbad was a mixed-breed canine sailor aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter George W. Campbell. Sinbad served 11 years sea duty in the Coast Guard, including combat in World War II. The dog was  intended to be a gift to a girlfriend of Chief Boatswain’s Mate A. A. “Blackie” Rother, but the girlfriend’s apartment didn’t allow dogs.

Sinbad joined up with the Coast Guard by putting his paw print on his own enlistment papers and was issued his own service identification number. He was ultimately awarded the American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and the Navy Occupation Service Medal.

LEX, US MARINE CORPS WAR DOG :

Lex was the first active-duty, working military dog to be granted early retirement in order to be adopted. While working in Fallujah, Iraq with US Marine Corps Cpl. Dustin J. Lee, Lex was wounded in an attack that killed his handler. According to reports, despite Lex’s own injuries, he refused to leave the side of Cpl. Lee, and had to be dragged away to be treated by medics.

Cpl. Lee’s parents, Jerome and Rachel Lee, appealed to the U.S. military to adopt Lex. Under a little-used statute that allows working military dogs to be released from service early under special conditions, Lex was released to the Lees.

Lex struggled with mobility issues due to retaining over 50 pieces of shrapnel in his body, but still worked as a therapy dog, visiting military veterans at VA hospitals and retirement homes, said the American Kennel Club. Lex died of cancer in 2012, at the age of 13.

Lex was awarded an honorary Purple Heart, and was honored in 2008 by the American Kennel Club with an Award for Canine Excellence (ACE).

CANINE RESCUE TEAM, 9/11 :

Within 15 minutes of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a trained search and rescue (SAR) dog named Appollo was on-site with his handler, Peter Davis of the New York City Police Department. In the following hours and days, over 350 SAR dogs and their handlers came to the Twin Towers site, and to the Pentagon, to search for survivors and to find bodies.

“The SAR dogs worked with their handlers up to 16 grueling hours a day,” says Animal Planet, “and it became evident that the dogs were nearly as distraught as the human rescuers when there were so few survivors to be found. For the human rescue workers, the lack of survivors made the attacks feel ever more horrific and tragic. For the dogs trained to find survivors, though, it felt like a personal failure.”

HACHIKO, FAITHFUL DOG :

Hachiko was an Akita dog who lived near the city of Odete, in the Akita prefecture of Japan. He was owned by Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at the University of Tokyo. At the end of each day, Hachiko would greet his owner at nearby Shibuya Station. This daily routine was followed until one day in May of 1925, when the professor did not return home from work. He had died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

LAIKA, SOVIET SPACE DOG :

Laika was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, trained along with two other dogs for the Soviet space program in 1957. Eventually, she was selected as the sole occupant of the Sputnik 2, becoming the first animal to orbit earth. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to de-orbit the spacecraft and return it to Earth safely, so Soviet officials said that Laika was euthanized prior to oxygen depletion on the sixth day of orbit. It was revealed in 2002 that the dog actually died within hours of launch, due to overheating. In 2008, Soviet officials erected a small monument to Laika, near the military research facility where she was trained.