Obamas’ new dog Bo is a “kind of crazy” foot-biter, says the first lady

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A group of children visiting the White House as part of a Take Your Child to Work Day program learned that new first dog Bo is ‘kind of crazy’ and stays up late into the night playing with toys.

First lady Michelle Obama said Bo startled the family with his activities just last night. ‘It was like 10 o’clock,’ Mrs. Obama told the group, which included Vice President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Maisie and other children and grandchildren of administration staff. ‘Everybody was asleep and we hear all this barking and jumping around.... The president and I came out and we thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo. He was playing with his ball. And it was like there was another person in the house.’

In a question-and-answer session with Michelle Obama, the new family pet was a frequent topic of conversation. The Associated Press shares the first lady’s response when asked what she would do if Bo ran away:

‘I would be very sad, first of all but ... he has [dog] tags, and hopefully someone would find him and bring him back,’ she said. She said it would be hard for Bo to get off the South Lawn, one of the places he is taken for walks and to play, because it is gated. But if he were to get out, she said, lots of people would try to track him down.

‘I think everyone at the White House would probably help go out and find him,’ she said. ‘That’s why we’re working on training him, so that he doesn’t run away and he listens when we call him. And so far he’s doing OK, so we hope we don’t have that problem.’

Another bit of information about the 6-month-old Portuguese water dog came to light: ‘He loves to chew on people’s feet,’ Mrs. Obama told the children.

--Lindsay Barnett