Nov. 28, 1964 - President Johnson announced today that Her, one of his two beagles, had died during surgery to remove a stone she had swallowed while frisking on the White House lawn.
“We have had a tragedy,” the President said in making known the dog’s death after his news conference in Austin, Tex.
He said he had been told of it by his 17‐year‐old daughter, Luci, who returned to Washington from the LBJ Ranch last night. The beagle was operated on yesterday, reportedly at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“Luci is heartbroken,” Mr. Johnson said.
Miss Johnson was the nominal owner of the dogs, but the President, like parents everywhere, was the one who walked them. And it was during one such walk last April that the yelps of the small brown, black, and white animals were heard around the world.
What happened was that the President, showing off Her and her brother, Him, to visitors on the White House grounds, lifted them erect by their floppy ears.
“Why do you do that?” someone asked.
“To make them bark,” the President replied. “It’s good for them. And if you’ve ever followed dogs, you like to hear them yelp.”
Within hours, bristling beagle breeders were phoning the White House to protest Mr. Johnson’s “cruelty.” John Neff, executive vice president of the American Kennel Club, said, “I’ve never heard that this is good for beagles.”
In Chicago, Allen Glisch, manager of the Animal Welfare League, said he had received more than 300 calls in protest.
“A number of them told me that although they’re staunch Democrats, the President had lost their vote in November,” he declared.
In May, the President, not backing down, lifted Him and Her by the ears again, but very slowly and gently. He also announced that he had accepted a life membership in an Evansville, Ind., humane society.
A day or so later, asked about the matter, former President Harry S. Truman said, “If you have any hounds, you know that's the way to lift ‘em. What are you hollering about?”
A canine psychologist said that, in any case, beagles, which were originally bred in Elizabethan England for hunting small game, had cheerful dispositions and were unlikely to hold a grudge.
Throughout the summer and into the fall, Mr. Johnson continued to exercise the two beagles regularly on the circular quarter‐mile drive on the South Lawn of the White House, often conducting impromptu news conferences as he walked. But he was not seen to lift them again by the ears.
The dead dog was 17 months old. Her father, Little Beagle Johnson, was also a pet of the Johnson family. He died in June 1963. Her mother was Penny, owned by Willard Deason of Austin, the President’s roommate at college.
The President once explained the naming of the dogs by saying the family hadn’t been able to agree on anything else.
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