Letter to President Obama #15 | Subject: The White House Dog

Letter to President Obama #15 | Subject: The White House Dog

Dear President Obama,

First of all, I’d like to congratulate you and your family on choosing a dog. I’ve got a few pieces of advice for you and the First Family, and I have a few questions that the general public might be interested in knowing about too.

First of all, I understand you selected a Portuguese Water Dog, because of its hypoallergenic properties. That’s probably a good idea. I have cats and they aren’t exactly hypoallergenic; to be honest, they leave hair all over the place. Because of this I no longer own any white shirts—when I had some all my white shirts immediately became covered in cat fur, so much so that people would think I was some sort of rabid mammal and they’d call Animal Control on me. Mr. President, getting bailed out of a cell is bad enough, but when that cell’s at the pound, it’s much worse. Thankfully, my girlfriend’s pretty nice. Unfortunately, my way of paying her back was letting her adopt a pet after each time she bailed me out. As of this writing, we have 12 cats.

I do have a question about national security and the First Dog—will the dog be anywhere near the Big Red Button? That is to say, as I understand it, somewhere in the White House there’s a Big Red Button that, when pressed, launches a whole bunch of nukes, thereby instigating one big game of atomic catch. I, for one, would like to encourage you to keep the First Dog away from that button—you never know, he could think it was a toy, or you could chuck a toy across the oval office and it could hit the Big Button. And then we’d all be in trouble.

If you think example is facetious, it’s not. Dogs can be inadvertently destructive. Consider my dog—his name is Bratwurst. He’s a wienerdog. Not surprisingly, he loves hot dogs. I was playing with him and I’d set my glasses on the bed. He jumped up onto the bed, crushing my glasses in the process. Later, I superglued them back together, but then he did again! Now imagine if he had jumped on the Big Button. You’d have a mess on your hands, Mr. President; at the very least, you’d have an angry Vladamir Putin on the other line. (Do you ever want an angry guy named Vlad on the other line?)

With that aside, I must commend you on the name of “Bo” for the First Dog, though I must admit that I resent those two letters a bit. During my first game of Monopoly, when I was five years old, I landed on B & O railroad, and I was really excited that I was about to purchase a property that was, as I joyfully exclaimed, “Named after me!” It was only then that Jeff, the player next to me, said, “Yeah, it is just like you, BODY ODOR.” Ever since, I’ve gone by three initials (BEO), not two. I have never forgiven Jeff.

I also have one other question—does the First Dog get Secret Service protection? If so, as an added precaution, maybe you should make him a bulletproof vest that looks like one of those dog sweaters. That’d be a good idea, and it’d probably be warmer too.

Please let me know what you think about these issues.

Sincerely,

Brett Ortler