Thursday January 3 1:52 PM ET

Clinton's Beloved Dog Buddy Killed by Car

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Buddy, the playful chocolate Labrador retriever often seen romping on the White House lawn with Bill Clinton, was killed by a car near the former president's home in Chappaqua, New York, police said on Thursday.

A police officer said the dog was hit on Wednesday afternoon. It was not clear whether the dog was being walked at the time or had wandered off the property owned by Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites).

``His dog was hit by a car. ... We received a call yesterday afternoon,'' said Sgt. Charles Ferry of the New Castle, New York police that covers suburban Chappaqua in Westchester County, north of New York City.

The dog was killed on a busy road at the end of the Clintons' cul-de-sac street, police said.

The former president's spokeswoman, Julia Payne, said the Clintons, who were vacationing in Mexico's coastal resort of Acapulco, ``are deeply saddened'' by Buddy's death.

In a statement, the family said, ``He was a loyal companion and brought us much joy. He will be truly missed.''

The dog was famously rambunctious, once knocking down Clinton as the former president became tangled in his leash, and gulping down a box of reporters' doughnuts in short order.

Buddy was 4-1/2 years old when he was killed, Payne said.

Adopted by the then-first family soon after he was born, the dog was named after Clinton's great-uncle.

Clinton left the White House in January 2001 after serving two four-year terms. Hillary Clinton (news - web sites) was elected U.S. senator for New York state in November 2000.

Letters to Buddy and the Clinton's cat Socks -- who did not get along terribly well -- were published in 1998 in ``Dear Socks, Dear Buddy, Kids' Letters to the First Pets.''

When the Clintons left the White House, Socks went to live with Betty Currie, who had been the former president's secretary.

-- (poor@little.buddy), January 03, 2002

Answers

Goddam rightwing bastards. First they impeach him for having sex, then they kill his dog. How low can they go? I suppose their next plot will be to gang rape his daughter and beat her to death. I hope they burn in Hell for all eternity.

-- (fucking@lowlife.scumbag.repugs), January 03, 2002.

I feel really bad for the dog in more ways than you can count.

This once again shows how negligent Billy can be.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 04, 2002.

Knowing Klintoon can be dangerous to your health. Monica, be very afraid.

-- (Vince Foster@six.feet), January 04, 2002.

Maria,

This is due to Clinton's neglinent? Why?

From what I saw they were thousands of miles away on a vacation; Bill, Hillary and Chelsea all together, which puts them away from the scene.

Workman left a door open too long - dog escapes - dog gets hit by a car. Happens too often, with noone really at fault.

-- SteveOH (thegoofycat@hotmail.com), January 05, 2002.

Don't these people have a fence? I mean an enclosure, not the other kind. >;)

-- helen (too@cold.to.go.out), January 05, 2002.

In a perfect world, Buddy would have been walking Hillary when………

-- Hey (it@could.happen), January 05, 2002.

Christ, you guys will argue about anything that has Clinton's name in it. Give it up. He's not President anymore. It's OVER.

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), January 05, 2002.

Clinton should have left the dog with a caretaker, not just some 'Workman'. *I* leave my dog in a fenced in area or someone's house, not just free to roam. But I'm not as negligent as Clinton.

Personally I think the dog knew to much and had to go. (joke)

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 07, 2002.

Maria, do you actually doubt that the Clintons did not identify someone who agreed to be responsible for Buddy while they were away?

Geez, don't conservatives believe in "personal responsibility" anymore? Do you think the poor caretaker was some kind of victim of the Clinton's bad judgement - and it was the job of the Clintons to protect that person from agreeing to do a job they were incompetant to do?

I say if Buddy's caretaker agreed to the job and failed to do the job, it is their failure, not the Clintons. But even more likely, given a rambunctious young dog like Buddy, it was an accident for crying out loud.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 07, 2002.

LN, I'm sure the ACLU would be willing to defend the poor, victimized caretaker. He/she is entitled to millions for the trauma caused by the Clintons having exercised such poor judgement in employing him/her. Hey! Maybe we could figure out a way to compensate this poor soul from the federal victims of terrorism fund?

-- (just an@anonymous.one), January 07, 2002.

LN you need to lighten up!

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 07, 2002.

(wagging finger) I'll have you know, Maria, that I have lost five pounds in the past two months, so don't you lecture me about needing to 'lighten up', young lady.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 07, 2002.

Please ignore Maria, she is dumb. She's very jealous that Clinton did not ask her for a hum job.

-- (please@ignore.imbeciles), January 07, 2002.

I know it's irreverent, but I can't believe nobody has asked:

Who let the dog out?

; )

-- Pammy (pamela_sue57@hotmail.com), January 07, 2002.

LN,

Ha, five pounds in two months. I lost twelve in fifteen days but seem to have hit a plateau lately.

But then maybe I started with more to lose than you.

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), January 08, 2002.

Pammy, exactly my thoughts when I first heard about this.

a, go back to your rat hole.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 08, 2002.

JBT, congratulations on your feat. Perhaps I can shed a bit of light of the reasons for your plateau. I'm sure you know all this - but it is easy to overlook.

Imagine a pound of butter. That is pretty much one pound of pure fat. If you look at the Nutrional Information panel on the butter package, you can calculate how many calories one pound of pure fat contains. I don't have that info in front of me, but it is a lot.

In order to lose one pound of fat, you need to metabolize it. The "average" person burns roughly 2500 calories a day. With increased exercise you can increase that number. The average food intake a day (with luck!) is also roughly 2500 calories.

The amount of fat you are going to lose in one day is the delta (difference) between the calories you ate and what you metabolized. I find it hard to get that delta much above 500 calories. That is maybe a couple of tablespoons of fat - maybe an ounce. Losing that much fat every day is doing really well!

You can lose weight a LOT faster than you can burn fat. Wrestlers and boxers who need to "make a weight" before a weigh in know this very well. You just have to dehydrate yourself. Water weighs a lot, and you excrete a lot of it during an average day, as urine, as sweat and as water vapor in your breath.

When someone tells me they lost almost a pound a day, I know in my heart of hearts that, despite what the scales tell them, they haven't lost anywhere near that amount of body fat. It was probably more water than anything else.

As a consequence, an important part of my "diet" is drinking a lot of water. Eight glasses a day at least. Especially when I feel hungry and it is not time to eat a meal. The water helps in a lot of ways, but one major benefit is that it keeps me from deluding myself about the pace of my success.

Good luck!

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 08, 2002.

Gee LN I didn't know you were going to get into fat burning. BTW fat is the very last thing your body burns; it wants to hold on to fat for a long time. And a tablespoon of butter contains 11 grams of fat at 99 calories. To lose a pound you must burn 3500 calories, most of that is from carbs, not fat. I do agree about water loss; after a race once I lost three pounds, that's three pounds in one hour of exercise.

Ok back to the dog...

Rumor has it that Buddy the Dog was actually killed at another location and his body dragged to where it was found near the Clinton residence in Chappaqua this week.

Another theory is that Buddy actually froze to death after jumping into Hillary's lap.

In any event, it's obvious that Buddy knew too much and someone was afraid he would talk. A search for his missing papers has been launched.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 08, 2002.

Insulin plays a major roll in fat being stored or burned. Sugar and carbs affect the production of insulin in the body. (So does caffeine.) Some of the new nutritional studies are fascinating! For so long, everyone thought the way to lose weight was to cut back on fat. Most of those who did ended up getting fatter. I'm curious about what kind of diets you guys are following? My guess is that JBT must be counting his carbs. : )

-- Pammy (pamela_sue57@hotmail.com), January 08, 2002.

Pam, I am not following any plan or diet per se. I've just been doing what common sense seems to dictate. I haven't much changed the balance of my meals in terms of fats, carbs or proteins. When I go for seconds, I try to eat a bit more vegies and a bit less of the obviously fatty stuff. I've been increasing my exercise moderately. I try to eat only when I am physically hungry. I drink more water.

I tell myself I am not "on a diet" - that the main indicator of how well I am doing is my overall tone, health and feeling of well-being, and not my measured weight. I weigh myself once in the morning (not every day, but most), then I try to forget about it. The less I fixate on the process, the better I seem to do.

That's about it.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 08, 2002.

Worked for me.

I lost 30 pounds in 3 months. Sadly, I went off the program and have gained a few back, but even after all of the holiday binging and face stuffing (and I mean STUFFING) I am still down 15 pounds from where I was when I started the above program.

Starting it again next week, wait to you see me this summer, heehee.

Can you say buff? I knew you could.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeeD@yahoo.com), January 08, 2002.

Unk, the first thing that jumped out at me from that web site (after the pictures of scantily clad men and women) were the words "Authorized Recipes". Those two words together mean I have no use for it, whatever it is.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 08, 2002.

LN,

Delve deeper laddie.

I used no "authorized recipes" at all. I was never hungry. In fact, I changed WHAT I eat very little, I merely changed WHEN and how often I ate it. Cut out the fats a bit, most important though is to eat several (5-6) meals a day. I am not one for "authorized recipe" diets, that shit sucks. The program at that website is actually pretty damned easy to do, but if ya want real results ya really need to work-out too.

I have the book which made the whole thing easy to understand and follow, but everything ya need to know is on the website too, methinks. Hell, all I know is it worked for me, and worked damned well.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeeD@yahoo.com), January 08, 2002.

What's happening this summer?

-- (wannasee@wanna.see), January 08, 2002.

Unk in the buff?

-- helen perks up (interested@for.science.of.course), January 08, 2002.

Unk, how about some pictures? ; )

I still wanna know about JBT's diet!

And now, back to Buddy:

Who Killed Clinton's Dog?

What did Buddy know, and when did he know it?

By Mickey Kaus

[Note: Kausfiles received the following from a gravelly-voiced outdoorsman in Arkansas who refused to give his name.]

"It was strictly an accident. The dog just darted out." That is what the media wants us to believe about the death of Buddy, Bill Clinton's 4-year-old Labrador retriever. (See "Who Is Buddy?" Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1997.) But is the truth about this—the latest Clinton casualty—that conveniently simple?

What do we really know about Buddy's death? Who stood to benefit? Consider the following:

On Dec. 19, 2001 Clinton has a meeting in his Harlem office to discuss ways to repair his "battered" image. The meeting is described in the New York Times as having a "special urgency." An image- building speech on globalization at Yale has apparently not brought Clinton the expected public sympathy.

Democratic leaders, Clinton is reported to have said, had not spoken up sufficiently on his behalf. They could not be relied on. Present at the meeting was Bruce Lindsey, Clinton's secretive consigliere and the man entrusted with the Clintons' most distasteful tasks.

Exactly two weeks later, Buddy was dead. As could have been predicted, Clinton benefited from a wave of public sympathy—sympathy he hadn't felt since at least Sept. 11. Clinton's office almost instantly issued a press statement saying the Clintons were "deeply saddened by Buddy's death."

It's almost as if it had been planned all along.

A look at the actual circumstances of Buddy's demise does little to allay suspicions. As many as nine strange facts remain uninvestigated. Consider:

THE NINE SUSPICIOUS FACTS ABOUT BUDDY'S DEATH

1. With all the high-tech security available to an ex-president on the Chappaqua property, the Clintons had apparently somehow failed to install what a dog expert called "the one essential safety feature, an invisible fence." This system would have given Buddy a small shock as he neared the property line, warning him not to cross it. Unless, of course, it had been turned off.

2. We are told that on Jan. 2, the day of Buddy's mysterious, violent end, "neither Clinton nor his wife was at home." Is this really a coincidence? Would the former first couple pay $1.7 million for a suburban headquarters and then just happen to not be at home when their dog is killed? On the other hand, if you wanted to do away with your dog, you'd want no fingerprints. Wouldn't you arrange to be out of town that day?

3. Would the trained ex-presidential personnel entrusted with Buddy's care really unintentionally allow him to "bolt" through the "front door" chasing a "contractor"? Who were these handlers? Why haven't such key eyewitnesses been subpoenaed?

4. Who was the shadowy "contractor" and why did he leave in such a hurry? What was he installing at the Clintons' residence, which had been fully remodeled several years ago? Isn't it strange that he would leave the gate open, when any "contractor" worth his salt knows that an open gate plus a dog equals a lawsuit?

5. Buddy is said to have "scampered" fully "600 feet down the road," and then another 100 feet on heavily traveled Route 117 before he was hit. Have you ever "scampered" 600 feet, the length of two football fields?

6. The 17-year-old "high school senior" who allegedly ran over Buddy has been described in the press as a "pretty brunette"—the same description, practically, that was once applied to White House intern Monica Lewinsky. What, if any, was her connection with the ex- president?

7. It is illegal in Chappaqua to allow a dog to run outside your property without a leash unless the dog is "under the owner's voice or visual control." Was Buddy actually being controlled? If not, who decided, at what level, to break the law? Why did an employee of the town clerk's office in heavily Democratic Chappaqua tell the New York Post (Jan. 4) that the penalty for violating this regulation only applies if a dog is picked up by a dog catcher?

8. Celebrity dog trainer Bash Dibra has now come forward, in the Post (Jan. 4), to say that he strictly advised Clinton to always use a leash with Buddy outside the home. Why was this celebrity advice ignored?

9. Writing in the New York Times, a former Clinton aide, now a shadowy "communications consultant," discloses that when Clinton was in office—perhaps at the very height of the impeachment scandal—Buddy would "pad on down to the basement of the West Wing, poking his nose into the wastebaskets outside Sidney Blumenthal's office." Yes, that Sidney Blumenthal, the partisan conspiratorialist who is so often at the center of Clintonian machinations—the same Sidney Blumenthal who had seemingly eerily anticipated last week's deadly event by writing a play about a scandal involving the president's dog. Why Blumenthal's trash, and no one else's? What did the doomed Labrador find there? Had Buddy smelled too much?

Connect the dots. It doesn't add up. No other conclusion seems even possible. Perhaps some subpoenas would help shake loose the real story. But who in Congress will step forward to do what is necessary?

Remember: When they say it's not about the leash, it's about the leash!

***********

LATE-BREAKING EVIDENCE OF COVERUP

One who might know the answer to some of the questions surrounding Buddy is Trumper, Buddy's neighbor. (See "Who Is Trumper?" WSJ, Aug. 2001.) But, as if to silence this witness months before the event, Trumper, a Shih Tzu, was put down by its owner in October. Was Trumper ill—or simply another name on the growing list of Clinton victims?

-- Pammy (pamela_sue57@hotmail.com), January 11, 2002.