Who said, “If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience?”

Clearly, it was someone who knew dogs, and it was.

Woodrow Wilson would become a US president in 1913, and his love of dogs began with a beloved childhood pet, a Greyhound named, “Mountain Boy.” In fact, Wilson’s private papers included an old childhood sketch he made of Mountain Boy (seen here) which now is part of the official archives at the Woodrow Wilson House in Augusta, Georgia. Wilson was even known to doodle images of the dog in his school books.

Wilson went on to have other pets, including a tobacco-chewing ram, a cat, and song birds, but as they say, you always remember your first. Wilson didn’t have a dog while residing in the White House, but he did have “Davie, an Airedale Terrier,” and not long before he died, he was gifted a white Bull Terrier named, “Whitestock Service Man,” or “Bruce.”  The breeder wrote a note to Wilson saying that he admired him “for his wonderful gameness under suffering and adverse circumstances, and above all for his natural inherent love for his fellow man.”  And then he said, “I, with my little Scotch wife, could not conceive of a better gift, or a more appropriate one than a dog that showed the same characteristics.”

During the war, President Wilson became the first president to shake hands with a decorated war dog.  The dog was the famous Sergeant Stubby, a Pit Bull Terrier.