Almost immediately after it was published last January, my book on Joe Biden’s White House went viral. But not for the reasons I’d expected. To be sure, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House had plenty of publicity-generating scoops: Biden calling Vice President Kamala Harris “a work in progress”; the president worrying about MAGA followers among his Secret Service detail; a Trump official secretly assisting Biden’s 2020 transition.

But this flurry of attention from Washington pundits was soon eclipsed by a blizzard of reaction from…canine lovers. For them, the top dog in the White House was not the commander in chief but his beloved, and in their view, persecuted, German shepherd, Major.

Major is one of two Biden pooches, including Commander, who have landed in the presidential doghouse. And many of the readers of my book are barking mad about it.

The fur began flying in March 2021. Major, a three-year-old at the time, reportedly bit a Secret Service agent on the second floor of the White House residence. The injury was minor and the agent was treated by the White House medical office. But as I reported, Biden wasn’t buying the details of this shaggy dog story—specifically where it had supposedly taken place. As I wrote, “Showing a friend around, Biden pointed to the spot of the alleged biting. ‘Look,’ the president said, ‘the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.’ Somebody was lying, Biden thought, about the way the incident had gone down.” After several nipping infractions, Major was sent to another home (along with Biden’s other German shepherd, Champ—a case of guilt by association?), and Commander, a three-month-old German shepherd puppy, moved in later that year. (Major and Champ were eventually brought back into the fold; Champ, however, would pass away in June 2021, at age 13.)

The response to my reporting from Major’s defenders was instantaneous, Pavlovian. Twitter exploded. The notion that the president’s pooch had bitten a Biden bodyguard, without provocation, wasn’t just a juicy bone of contention; it was raw meat thrown to dog lovers across America.

The pack was led by someone with the Twitter handle the Oval Pawffice.

Someone who calls himself Dubious chimed in:

Major is innocent, he was provoked or somehow made to react, on purpose. Something was done to him. And that’s what caused the whole chain of events. POTUS made the best decision in keeping him safe, away from the USSS [US Secret Service]. With Commander it’s different, prob new measures in place.

Oval Pawffice replied:

100 purrcent. Furry well said!

Lily posted:

Dogs are the best judge of character. So I will take your word on it [Major].

Labmom32136 tweeted:

I would take Majors’ version of events over the Secret Service. They have demonstrated how untrustworthy they are. I say woof woof go Major.

Jessica posted:

Major was framed.

And PSR wrote:

Anyone who Major doesn’t like is questionable as far as I’m concerned!!! He is clearly a very good boy & so, so adorable!!!

Awakening light-love declared:

Major for speaker of the house!

Denise posted a picture of her black Labrador, with the message:

Gemma says Major is innocent! Dogs know

The baying continued unabated. The original Oval Pawffice tweet about Major now has nearly 662,000 views, around 18,300 likes, and some 1,600 retweets. This dwarfed the number of retweets I got when I posted non-canine news about Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy or then White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

It was clear to me that for many who follow the inner workings of the West Wing, first dogs are not only a pet topic but a rabidly fanatical one.

“If you want a friend in life, get a dog,” Harry Truman famously said.

According to All-American Dogs: A History of Presidential Pets From Every Era, by Andrew Hager, 31 of the nation’s 46 presidents have been dog owners. Every one of Truman’s successors, in fact, brought a pooch to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—except for one: Donald Trump, a man who just doesn’t seem to abide dogs. (Unless, of course, you count his lap dog Mark Meadows.)

For a time, FDR’s playful Scottish terrier, Fala, was more popular than the president—so well known that during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, unfamiliar soldiers were asked to name FDR’s dog to prove that they were bona fide Americans and not German saboteurs. (Full disclosure: My mother, Jane B. Whipple, an acquaintance of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s, used to bring her nearly identical Scottie, Jock, to play with Fala on the White House lawn while the ladies sipped tea. To this day, we’re not sure if Fala or Jock went home with Mom.)

Down through the years, the rewards of canine company in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington have been not only personal but political. When Richard Nixon, then Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president, was ensnared in a scandal over an alleged political slush fund, he mentioned his cocker spaniel, Checkers, to win over Americans during a televised address. The “Checkers speech” arguably saved Tricky Dick’s political career. Barbara Bush’s English springer spaniel, Millie, “wrote” a best-selling book (as “dictated” to the first lady). It softened Bar’s crusty image—leading voters to forget that she’d once called Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro a word that “rhymes with rich.”

Conversely, presidents who appear to mistreat their canine companions go straight to the doghouse. Lyndon B. Johnson loved his dogs—and even “sang” duets with Yuki, a stray that LBJ’s daughter Luci found abandoned at a gas station in Texas. But the hounds were let loose when Life magazine ran a story on LBJ discussing his relationship with his beagles, Him and Her. One photograph showed the president lifting Him up by his ears. Johnson insisted, “I’ve been pulling Him’s ears since he was a pup, and he seemed to like it.” But howls of protest erupted from pet fanciers across the country. Coincidentally or not, LBJ declined to run for reelection in 1968.

Decades later, in 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign against President Barack Obama went to the dogs. Was it because the patrician GOP candidate was secretly recorded saying that 47% of Obama’s voters were “dependent upon government”? Or because years earlier, during a 12-hour road trip from Boston to Ontario, Romney had put Seamus, his Irish setter, in a dog carrier that he’d strapped on top of the family station wagon? According to The New York Times, one wag suggested on Fox News that to be more likable, Romney “should go out onstage with the dog that he had on the roof of the car and have the dog endorse him right there…Seamus and Mitt. (Except Seamus is dead, and Mitt is struggling to prove he’s alive.)”

The outraged reaction to Major’s troubles suggests that presidents would be wise to coddle their pooches. Indeed, Biden appears to be a hopeless dog lover, a coddler in chief. Commander, despite the biting spree of his predecessor Major, appears to have been given a very long leash. So long, according to a cache of records obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, that Commander has attacked Secret Service agents and officers not once but 10 times over a recent four-month stretch. Ruh-roh!

The drama had all the elements of a minor scandal—or maybe a hit song: “Who Let Biden’s Dogs Out?” The official explanation came from first lady Jill Biden’s spokesperson, Elizabeth Alexander: “The White House complex is a unique and often stressful environment for family pets, and the First Family is working through ways to make this situation better for everyone.” In other words, would everyone please just let sleeping dogs lie? Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the press corps, “The White House complex can be unique and very stressful. And that is something I’m sure you all can understand.” Wink-wink.

Maybe the fault lies not with the dogs but with their West Wing handlers. The fact that more than one of Biden’s dogs have gone rogue suggests that the humans, not the pooches, may be the ones in need of training. Cesar Millan, widely known as the dog whisperer from his popular television show, has offered to help. As Millan told Politico’s “West Wing Playbook,” “It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, it’s obviously not the dog. Let the dog whisperer come into the White House and just do what I’ve done for 20 years.’” So far, the White House isn’t biting.

Complicating things, Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, writing in The New York Times, posed several questions to consider in trying to understand Commander’s aggressive behavior:

Did someone suddenly approach Commander (surprising him)? Does it look as if he was in pain or in an uncomfortable situation (the bite as information about his discomfort)? Did he give warning signs like a growl or bark before biting (defensively)? Was the bite done in response to a spirited gesture or a chase (playfully)? What did the dog do after the bite—continue to bite or step back? Bark and jump (more assertive) or roll on his back, exposing his belly (more submissive or playful)?

These may well be important factors—who am I to argue with the experts? But readers of my book—especially followers of the Oval Pawffice—have suggested another possibility. Dogs know things that mere bipeds do not.

Teddy Roosevelt’s bulldog, Pete, once chewed the pants off the French ambassador. Who’s to say the ambassador didn’t have it coming to him? (Who in Washington hasn’t been tempted to put a haughty foreign diplomat in his place?) On a more poignant note, Jim Bishop, author of FDR’s Last Year, wrote that when Franklin Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, Fala seemed to intuit what had happened.

He had been dozing in a corner of the room. For a reason beyond understanding, he ran directly for the front screen door and knocked his head against it. The screen broke and he crawled through and ran snapping and barking up into the hills. There, Secret Service men could see him, standing alone, unmoving, on an eminence. This led to the quiet question: “Do dogs really know?”

Maybe Biden’s superpack knows something. Stop and think about it: Why do they primarily bite Secret Service agents? Why not White House staffers or Cabinet secretaries—or members of the press? Some agents have been muttering that Commander, like Hunter Biden, has benefited from a two-tiered system of justice. “What a joke,” wrote one of them in an email thread obtained by Judicial Watch. “If it wasn’t their dog, he would have already been put down—freaking clown needs a muzzle.” In her statement, Jill Biden’s spokesperson found it necessary to say, “The president and first lady are incredibly grateful to the Secret Service and executive residence staff for all they do to keep them, their family, and the country safe.”

Well, okay. But it’s also true, as I reported in The Fight of His Life, that Joe Biden suspects that some members of his security detail are MAGA sympathizers. While alarming, this shouldn’t be surprising: His predecessor, Donald Trump, politicized the agency—even promoting his most loyal agent to deputy White House chief of staff for operations, a baldly political move. And who can forget the chilling scene at the loading dock below the US Capitol on January 6, 2021—when Mike Pence refused to get in a Secret Service car? Because God only knew where they might have taken him.

But do Biden’s dogs know? In a country awash in conspiracy theories, Commander’s fans are true believers.

As Charles Alderete observed in that Twitter thread about Major:

The dogs see what is in a persons eyes and smell their mood and did not like the vibe of those agents. I hope they’ve been reassigned.

Tweeted someone who identifies as “edh r”:

There are no bad dogs. Bad people.

And Katie O Grady opined:

ALWAYS TRUST the DOGS. ALWAYS.