The Fight in the Dog

When he was president and met Vladmir Putin for the first time, George W. Bush said he looked into the Russian leader’s eyes and saw his soul.

Last week, in an interview with his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager on NBC’s Today Show, Bush recalled that Putin later “dissed” the First Dog, Barney, a Scottish terrier, who died last year at age 12.

Barney in happy days

“As you know, our dear dog Barney, who had a special place in my heart – Putin dissed him and said, ‘You call it a dog?’’’ the former president recalled.

Finding ways into the hearts and minds of foreign leaders is always the task of presidents and their secretaries of state, but Bush’s story about Putin and his visceral reaction to one man’s cute little black dog seems telling about Russia’s president.

Bush told his daughter in the Today interview that a year after the “dissing” of Barney, he and First Lady Laura Bush visited Putin “and Vladimir says, ‘Would you like to meet my dog?’ Out bounds this huge hound, obviously much bigger than a Scottish terrier, and Putin looks at me and says, ‘Bigger, stronger and faster than Barney.’ I just took it in. I didn’t react. I just said, ‘Wow. Anybody who thinks ‘my dog is bigger than your dog’ is an interesting character.’”

Putin was either kidding Bush, or he really views the relationship with the United States and its leader not as cooperative, but as competitive, like two boxers in a ring. Putin’s dog is Koni, a 14-year-old Labrador retriever

I would have been skeptical of this story, but when you consider it with the “Putin, The Man” photos of him trying to look manly, adventuresome and dapper, it begins to draw another picture of the man, one of a Russian leader pining for a Soviet past that is never going to return and that wasn’t as good as ex-KGB officer Putin romanticizes it to be.

In the Today interview, Bush told his daughter that he had a good relationship with Putin, though it “became more tense as time went on.” The reason Bush gives for this tension is, again, telling about the Russian leader.

Koni and his master

“Vladimir is a person who, in many ways, views the U.S. as an enemy,” Bush said. “Although he wouldn’t say that, I felt he viewed the world as either U.S. benefits and Russia loses, or vice versa. I tried to, of course, dispel him of that notion.”

Putin has taken Crimea and is stirring up trouble in Ukraine, but he faces many problems in his country that are not getting addressed and that are forming the pillars of unrest that cross-border incursions will soon no longer serve to distract from his country ills.

Bush called Putin “an interesting character” because of this competition over their dogs, but what’s more interesting is how the Ukraine, who Putin has been unable to intimidate into capitulation, reminds me of Bush’s dog Barney.

To quote the great American writer Mark Twain: “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”