Clinton acquired Buddy as a three-month-old puppy from Caroline County, Maryland, in December 1997.

He named him after his late great-uncle, Henry Oren "Buddy" Grisham, who had died the previous June and whom Clinton often cited as a major influence on his life.

According to a police report, Buddy was killed by a car while "playfully chasing a contractor" who had left the Clinton home in Chappaqua, New York, on January 2, 2002.

[6] It included excerpts from more than 50 letters written to the First Pets by children and more than 80 photographs of Socks and Buddy.

Buddy was a central character in Rick Cleveland's 2005 one-man show My Buddy Bill,[7] relating the writer's fictional friendship with Bill Clinton, which began when both men discovered their common interest in dogs.