(This March 9 story corrects to fix typo in “unnamed” and syntax in “official separately” in paragraph two)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A White House spokeswoman on Tuesday had no comment on a media report that President Joe Biden’s youngest dog had decamped the White House following an alleged biting incident, noting Biden’s two canine pets often travel to his home state of Delaware.
The comments follow a CNN report citing unnamed sources that Biden’s rescue dog Major had bitten a security staff member and that both dogs had left the White House. A White House official separately told NBC News the pets were with family friends in Delaware while First Lady Jill Biden travels this week.
“Major and Champ are part of the Bidens’ family… They often go to Delaware when the first lady’s traveling, and they’re adjusting to their new home,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told MSNBC in an interview, adding she had no specific details about the reports.
A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Jill Biden, who is visiting military bases in Washington state and California through Wednesday, has said she has been trying to settle the two German Shepherds into their new 18-acre home in Washington, D.C. since Biden took office in January.
Biden adopted Major in November 2018 from the Delaware Humane Society. Champ joined the family in 2008 when Biden was elected vice president under President Barack Obama.
Jill Biden last month noted the canines have had to get used to the White House as well as its many staffers.
“I’ve been getting obsessed with getting our dogs settled because we have an old dog and we have a very young dog,” she told “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in a Feb. 28 interview. “So that’s what I’ve been obsessed with, getting everybody settled and calm.”
In 2008, as former President George W. Bush was winding down his second term, his Scottish Terrier Barney bit the finger of a reporter who tried to pet him, according to the Associated Press.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Nandita Bose; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
