ALOHA: Bo hula-dances beautifully.

Big news this weekend: Bo, the Obamas’ new Portuguese Water Dog has arrived. Yes, wearing a lei, like the Brady Bunch when they go to Hawaii. Except that Bo—a pedigreed scion of the Amigo Portuguese Water Dog Kennel in Boyd, Texas—is considerably more well-bred than all the Bradys put together.

Though the media has dutifully covered every aspect of Bo’s debut and his dramatic back-story, few reporters have thought to consider his mother, the tireless dog who bore him, nurtured him, spent hours leafing through catalogs to find just the right size-2 lei, and took him to countless “Bitch and Me” classes so that he could develop a basic grasp of rhythm and blues.

This miraculous mom is known formally, in the bizarre parlance of championship dogs, as “Ch. Amigo’s Phor What It’s Worth.” Her friends call her Penny. Her pedigree goes back five generations to the mid-1980s, and her ancestors all have similarly verbose names like “Amigo My Fayre Lady” and “Farmion the Bismark” that do not lend themselves to fun nicknames.

PROFILE IN COURAGE: Bo's Mom

Little is known of Penny’s life. The only photo I could find of her (right) depicts her standing on a table beside a paunchy gentleman, who seems to think her tail is the stick-shift of a sports car. We do known that Penny conceived Bo during a one-night stand with a stud named Walker, and that Walker’s owner distractedly drank a beer during the lovemaking, while holding Penny by a leash. It’s not easy to throw yourself heart and soul into the conception of a perfect baby when you are being constrained by a leash. So, for that, Penny, we salute you!

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