Sully, George H.W. Bush's service dog, seen at Ellington Field in Houston as the president's casket left for Washington (AFP Photo/David J. Phillip) |
Washington (AFP) - A US president is believed to have said the easiest way to find a friend in Washington was to get a dog. On Monday, George H.W. Bush's faithful service dog Sully made a final journey back to the US capital with the late president.
Two days
after Bush's death at age 94, family spokesman Jim McGrath posted a touching
photograph of the yellow Labrador retriever lying down in front of Bush's
casket, with the accompanying phrase "Mission Complete" and the
hashtag #Remembering41.
The
two-year-old Sully has been at Bush's side since June, just weeks after the
death of the president's wife Barbara, to whom he was married for 73 years.
Bush's son
George W. Bush, the nation's 43rd president, posted the photograph on
Instagram, with a message announcing Sully's transfer to Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center in suburban Maryland.
"As
much as our family is going to miss this dog, we're comforted to know he'll
bring the same joy to his new home, Walter Reed, that he brought to 41,"
the younger Bush wrote. His post has received a quarter million likes.
Sully is
named after retired airline pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III,
who gained fame when he landed a damaged passenger jet on New York's Hudson
River in 2009.
Historians
believe Harry S. Truman's folksy aphorism about friends in Washington and dogs
is probably apocryphal -- the 33rd US president didn't actually like dogs --
but he would surely have fallen for Sully's charms.
The
four-legged friend is already something of an online star. Sully's own
Instagram account describes the dog as "a kinder, gentler labrador,"
a play on Bush's words in his 1988 acceptance speech, when he called for
"a kinder and gentler nation."
The account
-- with 123,000 followers -- has playfully chronicled Sully's time with Bush at
Walker's Point, location of the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
It features
a photograph of Sully laying down in front of Bush and Bill Clinton, the man
who defeated him in the 1992 presidential race. The two men struck up a close
friendship.
Sully was
provided to Bush by America's VetDogs, a group which pairs service and therapy
dogs with people with physical limitations like blindness, or those who suffer
from effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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