Presidential Pet Scandals: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Scottish Terrier, Fala

Presidents love their pets. Of the 44 Presidents America has had, 42 of them have owned at least one pet and usually many more. One might even argue that most Presidents have loved their animals as much as they've loved their women. And like women, their pets have sometimes landed them in a whole heap of trouble. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one such President. His little Scottish Terrier, Fala, caused just such a Presidential Pet Scandal.

In 1940, FDR got a Scottish Terrier puppy from a friend of his family for Christmas. The puppy's name was Big Boy, but Roosevelt quickly changed his name to Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, after a Scottish ancestor. The dog was called Fala, for short, and he quickly became inseparable from the President. He traveled everywhere Roosevelt went and was named an honorary private in the U.S. Army. According to an article called "Bizarre History of White House Pets," on Mentalfloss.com, Fala was so loved by the President that the pooch got a bone every day on Roosevelt's breakfast tray. Being "First Dog" not only meant instant fame for Fala, but it also opened him up to limitless opportunities, including extravagant vacations.

Around the time FDR was running for his fourth term as President, he was also returning from vacation in the Aleutian Islands, in 1944. Fala was mistakenly left behind, and quickly rumors spread about how Roosevelt had used tax payer dollars to send a destroyer ship back to pick up his forgotten dog. FDR's Republican foes believed they could use the story to their political advantage, but Roosevelt had other ideas.

On September 23, 1944, in a speech to the Teamsters in Washington D.C., FDR said, "These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog."

The audience loved it, and so too did the pet loving American public. FDR's wife Eleanor later penned in her memoirs that her husband's "Fala Speech" turned the whole election around for Franklin. Roosevelt went on to defeat Thomas Dewey in the 1944 Presidential election, but he died less than three months into his term. Fala lived out the rest of his life in Eleanor's care, until his death in 1952.