One of the first White House pets was John Adams’ dog Satan.
Although he was the second president of the United States, John Adams was the first to (briefly) live in the presidential residence now known as the White House. That means he and his wife, Abigail, inaugurated such White House traditions as the selection of furnishings, the hosting of official gatherings, and the introduction of presidential pets — one of whom answered to the moniker of Satan.
Despite the copious surviving correspondence between John and Abigail Adams, there exist few juicy details about this devilishly named dog for historians to sink their canines into. We do know that the pup shared the White House grounds with another mixed-breed named Juno (and possibly a third dog, named Mark). We can also deduce that Satan had to compete for the divided attention of the horse-loving president, who built the White House stables to house his carriage horses Cleopatra and Caesar.
Though they were the first to bring animal residents to the White House, the Adamses were not the last presidential family to bestow their pets with unusual names. Later nonhuman occupants of the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion include Benjamin Harrison’s opossums Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection; Rutherford B. Hayes’ cats Siam, Miss Pussy, and Piccolomini; and Theodore Roosevelt’s guinea pigs Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O’Grady. But as with other matters of American presidential history, it’s hard to top the standard set by George Washington, who blessed his dogs with such memorable names as Drunkard, Madame Moose, and Sweet Lips.
