Has QAWS contacted Obama Yet ??

The Middle East is in flames and the global economy in meltdown, but Barack Obama revealed yesterday that he has a far weightier matter to deal with: whether his daughters get a labradoodle or a Portuguese water hound as their White House puppy.

After receiving thousands of suggestions from dog lovers since he announced on election night that Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, were to get a puppy – he says that he has had more advice on the dog than on economic policy – Mr Obama said that the choice had been narrowed down to those two breeds.

“We’re now going to start looking at shelters to see when one of those dogs might come up,” the President-elect said on ABC’s This Week. “We’re closing in on it. This has been tougher than finding a Commerce Secretary” – a jab at Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, who withdrew from being Mr Obama’s nominee because of a fraud investigation in his home state.

Malia is allergic to dogs, so Mr Obama and his family have been focusing their search on breeds that do not inflame allergies. No dog is 100 per cent hypoallergenic, but the American Kennel Club recommends Portuguese water hounds because they do not shed their hair.

Just after he was elected, Mr Obama – whose mother was white and father a black Kenyan – said he expected the dog to be “a mutt like me”. That could mean that the labradoodle, a cross between a labrador retriever and a poodle, might have the edge.

Whenever the puppy is chosen, the next question will be what to name it. A bookmaker in Dublin says that he has already had more than 1,000 bets on what it will be called, with money placed on a long list ranging from Washington to Dubya. Osama will get you odds of 500-1.

On a visit to a school in Chicago last month, Mr Obama told a group of children that his daughters would not only have to feed and walk the dog. “You know, if they do their business, if they’ve got some poop, you got to make sure that you’re not just leaving it there,” he said.