White House Pets: Merry Menageries

Gallery

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Alice Roosevelt with a family parrot, ca. 1904.
Library of Congress
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Kermit Roosevelt holding his rat terrier Jack, ca. 1902.
Isabella Hagner James Papers, The White House
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President Roosevelt frolics with Rollo, his St. Bernard, ca. 1906.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard University
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President Theodore Roosevelt and family, 1907.
Library of Congress
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Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, 1963.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/NARA
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Caroline Kennedy's pet ducks march toward the pond on the South Grounds of the White House.
White House Historical Association
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John Kennedy, Caroline, and John Jr. with Macaroni outside the Oval Office, 1962.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/NARA
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Mixed breed Pushinka with her pups on the White House lawn, 1963.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/NARA

About this Gallery

Two of the youngest presidents to reside in the White House brought their families and a menagerie of pets along with them. A pony, sheep, dogs, cats, a macaw, guinea pigs, rats, a snake, and many more animal friends lived at the Theodore Roosevelt White House. The family of John F. Kennedy brought pet hamsters Debbie and Billie; a gray cat, Tom Kitten; and a canary, Robin, to the White House. Eventually, ponies Macaroni and Tex; Pushinka; Welsh terrier Charley; German shepherd Clipper; cocker spaniel Shannon; parakeets Maybelle and Bluebell; and Wolf, an Irish wolfhound, would come and go.

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