A history of pets in the White House.

A history of pets in the White House through data visualization.

A history of pets in the White House

There’s something nice about seeing the most powerful person in the world relaxing with their pets. The white house has been home to every type of animal you can imagine. There have been lions, tigers, alligators, horses, ponies, antelope, bobcats, and much more!

Table of contents

• Presidential Pets 1950-2020
• Presidential Pets 1900-1950
• Presidential Pets 1850-1900
• Presidential Pets 1789-1850

How to use the graphs below

Just put your mouse (on desktop) or finger (on tablet or phones) over the circles and you’ll see the data connected to them.

Presidential Pets 1950-2020

Interesting facts:

• President Donald Trump is the first American president in one hundred and fifty years not to have a pet in the White House.
• JFK had eleven different dogs.
• Joe Biden has the first dog ever adopted from a shelter to live in the white house. ???? ????

Presidential Pets 1900-1950

Interesting facts:

• Franklin Roosevelt famously left his dog Fala in a foreign country. He used taxpayer dollars to rescue Fala and many attacked him politically for doing this. In a famous speech called the Fala Speech Roosevelt said, “you can criticize me, my wife and my family, but you can’t criticize my little dog. He’s Scotch and all these allegations about spending all this money have just made his little soul furious.”
• Calvin Coolidge had one antelope, one bear, twenty birds, one bobcat, eleven dogs, one donkey, one hippopotamus, two lions, one raccoon, and one wallaby!
• Woodrow Wilson famously had forty-eight sheep who did a great job chowing down on the white house lawn.
• Theodore Roosevelt had the one and only pig ever to live in the white house.

Presidential Pets 1850-1900

Interesting facts:

• Andrew Johnson made friends with some white mice in his bedroom.
• Abraham Lincoln had the one and only turkey in the white house.

Presidential Pets 1789-1850

Interesting facts:

• George Washington had a bird, six dogs, one donkey, two horses, and five stallions as America’s first president.
• Martin Van Buren had two tigers at the white house.

Data for our infographic was gathered from Wikipedia.

You might also be interested in our dog year’s calculator.