Dog Watch '08

By Tim State in News on Jan 11, 2009 5:36PM

It appears that Obama is narrowing down the search for a four-legged companion. He told George Stephanopoulos earlier this morning on ABC’s This Week that the dog will probably be a “Labradoodle” or a “Portuguese Water Hound.” (It’s really a Portuguese Water Dog, but we’ll cut Obama some slack since he’s been busy saving the economy.)

A Labradoodle is a crossbreed between a Labrador Retriever and a standard Poodle. The desire is to have the low-shedding coat of a Poodle with the gentle, trainable demeanor of a Labrador Retriever. Tiger Woods, Jennifer Anniston, and Perez Hilton all have the trendy mutt.

Portuguese Water Dogs are a fairly rare breed, but their no-shed qualities and personalities have made them popular in recent years. Originally, they were bred to herd fish into fishermen’s nets, retrieve lost tackle or broken nets. How they do that, we have no idea, but we found this on the Internet; so you know it’s true. [Trib]