WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Tuesday said it had no comment on a media report that President Joe Biden’s youngest dog had decamped the White House following an alleged biting incident, noting Biden’s two canine pets often travel to his Delaware home.
The comments follow a CNN report citing unnnamed sources that Biden’s rescue dog Major had bitten a security staff member and that both dogs had left the White House, although the report did not make clear if the pets’ departures were permanent or temporary.
“Major and Champ are part of the Bidens’ family… They often go to Delaware when the first lady’s traveling, and they’re adjusting to their new home,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told MSNBC in an interview, adding she had no specific details about the report.
First Lady Jill Biden has said she has been trying to settle the two German Shepherds into their new 18-acre home in Washington, D.C. since Biden took office Jan. 20.
Biden adopted Major in November 2018 from the Delaware Humane Society. Champ joined the family in 2008 when Biden was elected vice president under President Barack Obama.
Jill Biden last month noted the canines have had to get used to the White House as well as its many staffers.
“I’ve been getting obsessed with getting our dogs settled because we have an old dog and we have a very young dog,” she told “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in a Feb. 28 interview. “So that’s what I’ve been obsessed with, getting everybody settled and calm.”
In 2008, as former President George W. Bush was winding down his second term, his Scottish Terrier Barney bit the finger of a reporter who tried to pet him, according to the Associated Press.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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