Once upon a time, President Woodrow Wilson said one of the most profound things I have ever heard about pet dogs and their ability to gauge a human’s intentions, emotions, and even nature:
If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience.”
That seems to me to be just about a perfect summary of our relationship with our canine companions, and it’s paraphrased a million different ways on bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and t-shirts everywhere — “The more people I meet, the more I like my dog,” or “If my dog doesn’t like you, I don’t like you either” — because it’s pretty common wisdom.
Why, then, is Donald Trump the first President in 130-odd years to not have one?
There are plenty of explanations, but none more simple than he just plain doesn’t like them. And although Trump has repeatedly told his supporters that it’s because he just doesn’t have the time to keep a pet, the fact is, we know that Trump has taken more golf outings than any previous President at this point in his administration by a country mile, so he’s not exactly short on free time.
In fact, we’ve read reports that he’s left meetings right in the middle to go watch television, and the analysis of what he tweets in the mornings versus what was said within ten minutes of those tweets on Fox and Friends or some other news program seems to bear out the idea that he’s glued to the tube a heck of a lot more than “I just don’t have time” would convey.
But the most damning evidence of all that Trump is — let’s face it — a dog-hating sociopath is that he rejected this cute doggie right here, despite the joy that it reportedly brought to his son, Barron:
That’s Patton the Goldendoodle, a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle. He was given to the President by Lois Pope, the wife of the man who turned the National Enquirer from a broadsheet newspaper into a tabloid.
But Trump wouldn’t keep the dog. Pope wasn’t heartbroken — she was already in love with Patton and kept him herself.
It’s hard to imagine what’s in the heart of a man who could reject a dog like that, or any dog for that matter. But Donald Trump may not actually have a heart, so the explanation could be as simple as that.
Featured image via screen capture
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