How to Properly Name-Drop a Canine

Power Player.

In business and politics, it's all about who you know. And connections are connections -- even if the power player in your Rolodex likes the taste of his own feces.

Yesterday morning, Riptide experienced a first: In a post-interview chat with a prominent Miami businessman and former city politician who shall go unnamed, he name-dropped a dog.

Y'see, the businessman counts Ted Kennedy among his clients, and he says while T-Ken was down in Key Biscayne undergoing chemotherapy, he had a chance to play with a very special puppy, then known as Charley. Not long afterward, the Portuguese water dog took a red-eye to Washington, where he became Bo -- the Obama family's first puppy.

Straight-faced: "So, yeah, I knew Bo before he was Bo. He's a very well-trained dog."