Nixon Dog Memo | Pets Adviser

President Nixon Dog Memo

President Nixon and King Timahoe.

Several more hours of Richard Nixon tapes were released in July 2007, along with tens of thousands of pages of documents.

Sure, sure, there’s the predictable Nixonian rants about minorities (“We don’t owe the blacks a damn thing,” he says on one audio recording), and talk about finding a token “house Jew” to put on staff; there’s objectionable language, and even some smack-talking about Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Senior. But there’s one little nugget we at PetsAdviser.com also found interesting, and it’s about, of all things, a dog.

The memo, from a presidential aide and addressed to Bob Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, lays out in excruciating detail the daily regimen concerning care for the president’s difficult Irish setter, King Timahoe. The memo is titled, “Follow-up on the King Timahoe Situation,” and is dated January 26, 1970. (Two years before the Watergate break-ins that ultimately led to Haldeman’s stint in federal prison — we guess these were the heady days before more pressing matters arose.)

The aide, Alexander Butterfield, had gathered details from Manolo Sanchez, Nixon’s devoted valet, a Cuban immigrant whose English skills were lacking. Butterfield described his conversation with Manolo as a “long, agonizing and in-the-main unenlightening ‘conversation.’ ” He continued: “The next time you want some information on the subject of doggie affairs, … I’m going directly to the dogs.”

At any rate, from the looks of the memo, the dog had it good. At least two other handlers besides Manolo looked after him, and he got to frolick on the South Lawn “nearly all day.” He also was fed “all he wants to eat.”

At one point in the Nixon presidency Timahoe received a presidential medal of freedom from an aide. It was a joke, but hey, Nixon did love a loyal servant.

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