Opinion: Biden buys fancy dog, next up Obama. But rescue or purebred?

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Somewhere right now there is a dog of some kind that doesn’t know it’s about to be plucked from furry obscurity to live with two little girls in a white house as something akin to a Cinderella national pet.

We’re taking a vote down below here on where the Obamas’ new dog should come from, a purebred breeder or a rescue shelter, after the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Barack and Michelle Obama have promised Sasha and Malia a dog when they move into the president’s house because virtually every president needs to have a pet, like about two-thirds of American households.

We’ve been so busy in recent days writing about such superficial things as the alleged sale of a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois and the alleged homophobia of Obama’s chosen inauguration pastor from California that we missed the contretemps stirred up by fellow blogger Lindsay Barnett over at L.A. Unleashed.

It seems that Vice President-elect Joe Biden has been reading up on his VP 101 text and discovered that he too needs a dog, in addition to his adopted stray cat Daisy.

So he went over to Pennsylvania and bought a German Shepherd puppy from a breeder, which got people talking about puppy mills and violations and saving some of the thousands of homeless dogs and cats in cages waiting for adoption or euthanasia in the nation’s crowded shelters.

(CANINE UPDATE: Biden has decided to get a second dog -- he’d prefer a golden retriever -- and this one will come from a shelter. Seems like the kind of compromise a legislator would make, but that can’t be because Biden is almost a VP.)

So before it’s too late for the new First Family, what should they do about getting a dog? Vote below.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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