In keeping with time-honoured French presidential tradition, Emmanuel Macron has given the country a First Dog.
The 39-year-old president and his wife Brigitte adopted a black labrador-griffon mix at the weekend, whom they have named Nemo after the captain in Jules Verne’s science fiction classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
Nemo – who is aged between one and two years and was adopted from a shelter for abandoned dogs – was glimpsed yesterday, scampering around the Elysee Palace in a red collar, under the watchful eye of footmen.
Every post-war French president has had a dog, who has the run of the palace’s expansive gardens.
Most have picked a labrador, though World War II hero Charles de Gaulle had a pint-sized corgi – a gift from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.
Nemo succeeds Philae, a labrador named after the European Space Agency’s comet lander that was gifted to ex-president Francois Hollande as a puppy by Montreal-based French war veterans.
Across the Atlantic, torrents of ink were spilt on ex-president Barack Obama’s pet dogs Bo and Sunny.