A few days before the presidential inauguration, an official had an idea: bring one of the English mastiffs to Javier Milei so that he, recently sworn in as president, could walk the block that separates the Pink House of the Cathedral next to the animal. In his imagination, that image of the libertarian with the gigantic dog would travel the world and be the cover of all the major media outlets. So convinced was he, in fact, that he mentioned it to the person who makes the bulk of the Government’s decisions. But he barely heard him speak, Karina Milei he cut it short. “Look, first of all it’s not a dog. He is ‘the little four-legged son’. And it is not for jokes or to pose for photos.” The official never spoke about the subject again.
Although it is barely an anecdote, the scene reflects the heart of the President’s relationship with his animals: he literally feels like they are his children. That is why she became angry when journalist Silvia Mercado said – after confirmation from a source authorized to her – that the mastiffs had moved to the Quinta de Olivos, or that is why she forbids her people to speak or mention them. “Crazy”, the unauthorized biography about him that revealed that Conan has been dead for years, that his “four-legged children” are his clones, that he thinks that they advise him in different areas and that the ghost of the original put him in communication with God. In Creole, it is a sensitive fiber.
The violence of the comment to Mercado -“serial liar”- he once again raised an issue that already appeared during the campaign: where are Milei’s dogs? How many are there really? Why do you insist on the version that Conan is alive, if he died in 2017?
Government spokespersons assure that today they are in “a daycare center.” At least until Milei moved to the Libertador hotel, at the end of the campaign, the animals lived in the country in Benavídez. Before, during the pandemic, they were almost two years at the Don Torcuat shelteror, an emblematic place in the northern area. Her previous step had been more controversial: Milei had them in her 100 square meter apartment in Abasto. Since they couldn’t fit there – they weigh 100 kilos and stand almost two meters tall – she had walls torn down, and then she designed a strange system in which she tied them to the floor using pulleys. Perhaps because of this atypical childhood, as Milei himself said, the animals are quite aggressive.
What is unknown is how many are still alive. The animals are the genetic copies of Conan, a task that was done in the company Perpetuate yourself, at the beginning of 2018 in the United States. “A tissue sample is taken, usually a very small piece of skin, which is then collected by a veterinarian and the samples are sent here,” says Ray Page, one of the owners of the company (see box).
The drawback with clones is that they have a lower life expectancy, which is added to the fact that dogs of this breed usually have a maximum of about 12 years. Furthermore, Milei still does not recognize that the original Conan is dead, and the fact of the mystical connection that she claims to have with him – thesis according to which the “little four-legged son” connects him with God – fuels all kinds of fantasies. On social media there are hundreds of comments from people convinced that they are all really dead. Some sources, who went to the libertarian’s country in Benavídez, swear that they saw four and not five animals, as they should be among Murray, Robert, Milton, Lucas and the second Conan. Mysteries from beyond the grave.
“In 15 days the animals will be in Olivos,” they say from the Government, where they swear that the delay is due to the completion of the kennels that they will install to reinforce the stables of the residence, where they will live. When the clones arrive, in principle, this novel will end. Or maybe the opposite
