Fido: Abraham Lincoln’s Dog Was the First Presidential Dog to be Photographed

Meet Fido: Abraham Lincoln’s beloved dog and the first Presidential dog to be photographed and still have surviving records. Mr. Lincoln loved his dog and, before he became President, he was said to bring the dog with him into town often. The dog would sometimes fetch parcels and even wait outside the barbershop when he got a haircut.

When he became President, Fido got scared by the festivities. You know, just the typical stuff that all of your four legged friends get worried about on the 4th of July and any other time there are fireworks. Because of this, Mr. Lincoln decided that he couldn’t take Fido to D.C. with him.

Because of this, Fido was left in the care of another family who promised to return the dog when Mr. Lincoln’s term was over.

According to Cliff on Flickr:

This floppy-eared rough-coated dog of unknown ancestry lived with Lincoln in Springfield, Ill., for the five years before he became President. Upon his election, Lincoln decided that the dog would not survive the trip to Washington and, despite the objections of his son Tad, left Fido in Illinois. When Lincoln’s body was returned to Springfield, Fido was brought out to meet the mourners.

Unfortunately later on, Fido met his end when a drunken man stabbed the dog while mistaking him for being aggressive.

If you’ve ever read anything about Abraham Lincoln, you’d know that he loved to read and was super kind to animals. When he was a boy, he encountered another youth who broke the back/shell of a turtle just to laugh at it squirm. It’s said that Lincoln became very angry at the boy, even threatening to break his back.

Of course, those were different times.

Image by Cliff. Used with Creative Commons permission