Champ and Major Biden become the latest presidential pets

Champ and Major Biden will be the latest First Dogs.

Champ and Major Biden will become the latest First Dogs and the newest members of the long-lasting line of presidential pets.

This comes following the announcement on Saturday morning, November 7, that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, following several days of uncertainty while the plethora of absentee ballots were totaled up.

Joe Biden and his wife Jill adopted Major the German Shepherd from the Delaware Humane Association in 2018, while Champ around 12 years old and was purchased from a breeder. There is room for both approaches to adopting a dog, while it illustrates well how Biden can work with a variety of people and approaches.

While soon-to-be-Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have a dog of her own, she is a big fan of them, and she will make history as the first female Vice President, as well as the first black Vice President.

As People magazine notes, Major Biden will make some history of his own, becoming the first First Dog to be a rescue pup.

The previous First Dogs to occupy the White House were Bo Obama and his sister Sunny, both of whom were Portuguese Water Dogs, as Bo’s arrival was famously announced during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in 2008.

Like Bo, Champ and Major Biden have their own Twitter account at @MajorBiden, though they don’t often post their own thoughts (social media takes all types, though, so that’s fine).

“Today feels like another steal a burrito day,” their ally Bailey Warren, a Golden Retriever belonging to Senator Elizabeth Warren, tweeted on Friday.

The most famous First Dog to ever occupy the White was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s Scottie named Fala, becoming such an important personage that he even has been included as a key character in several historical fiction novels. Fala is even part of the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC, which was an impressive detail to see when I (Wesley) got to visit the city while in high school.

Doing Fala one better was Millie Bush, a Springer Spaniel who belonged to George and Barbara Bush, who wrote a New York Times No. 1 memoir titled Millie’s Book in 1990. (It’s well worth reading if you can find it.) Millie also has a dog park named in her honor in Houston, Texas.

The most famous First Cat was probably Socks, who belonged to Bill Clinton. Other pets in the White House have included everything from parrots and mockingbirds to horses and alligators (Teddy Roosevelt’s kids basically had a whole zoo).

While nearly all Presidents have had a pet of some kind, 33 of them (counting Biden, though only counting Grover Cleveland once due to his non-consecutive terms) have had dogs.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on if German Shepherds increase in popularity over the next few years thanks to Champ and Major, as Portuguese Water Dogs skyrocketed up the rankings during Bo and Sunny’s years in the White House.

Are you excited about Champ and Major Biden’s new role?