Scott Walker, Allergic to Dogs, May Run Against Political History

By JASON HOROWITZ MARCH 31, 2015

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and his wife, Tonette, had planned to spend a recent Friday night at the Nashua home of Jennifer Horn, the New Hampshire Republican chairwoman. Then he heard about Al, the Horns’ beloved Dalmatian-Catahoula Leopard mix. The dinner was promptly moved to a restaurant in nearby Bedford. “The governor’s allergic to dogs,” Ms. Horn said. “And we have a very hairy dog.”

The attention to Mr. Walker’s likely candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination has focused on weighty matters such as his battles with the left, faltering forays into foreign policy and conservative stances on social issues including abortion and gun rights. But little notice has been given to an area in which he faces a different sort of constitutional challenge: overcoming his aversion to man’s best friend.

Jeb Bush can lament how he lost a Labrador (named for his brother Marvin) to cancer. Marco Rubio has a Shih Tzu, with a name like a gift from heaven: Manna. Ted Cruz goes one better: His rescue mutt is called Snowflake. (“Dear Jesus, please, please, PLEASE bring us a puppy,” his daughters prayed, according to Mr. Cruz’s Facebook page.) And if Mr. Walker makes it to November, he could face Hillary Rodham Clinton and her toy poodle, Tally.

Mr. Walker, who gives a gloomy stump speech filled with “worry,” perhaps could use a four-legged image softener of his own. But he is allergic to dog dander, an aide confirmed. And in that, he is running against the long sweep of United States political history. If the ritual for presidential candidates wooing American voters had a handbook, “must love dogs” would be somewhere near the front. At the Newseum in Washington, the “First Dogs: American Presidents and Their Pets” exhibit is listed as “on display indefinitely.” On the National Mall, the memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt depicts his Scottish terrier, Fala, forever at his feet. Puppy love in presidential campaigns dates at least to Herbert Hoover, who loosened up his stiff image by posing, paws in hands, with King Tut, his Belgian Malinois, on the way to victory in 1928.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/us/politics/scott-walkers-dog-allergy-could-be-a-campaign-hazard.html?smid=tw-nytimes

Dogs? I heard Walker's allergic to working people.