I NEVER met Buddy, but I felt his pain.

While the entire nation mourns the former first dog who was killed in a traffic accident last week at the prime ball-chasing age of 41/2, I could not escape a deeper, lingering sadness about the fate of Bill Clinton's long-suffering best friend.

Yes, Buddy suffered much in his brief time on this planet. Certainly, Bill Clinton loved his dog - but no presidential pooch (with the possible exception of Abe Lincoln's Fido, who was murdered) was more put-upon than Buddy.

He scampered onto the national scene in 1997, but those peaceful dog days ended abruptly during the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, when Buddy became forever trapped in the whirlpool of Bill Clinton's emotional abyss.

Washington is certainly a dog-eat-dog town - and while political enemies chewed up Bill Clinton, they also took a bite out of Buddy. The more isolated and stressed Clinton became, the more Buddy felt it.

"Dogs are emotional sponges," the late, great ASPCA Director Roger Caras told me at the time. "Their behavior reflects the pressures they feel around them."

Worse, Caras said, dogs just assume that they are the cause of their owner's stress. The problem gets compounded because the owner is less likely to throw a ball around - a common show of affection - when he's being impeached.

No wonder Buddy was looking forward to retirement in the suburbs. But that's just when the pardon scandal erupted, locking its pincer-like jaws on the helpless dog. With Clinton feeling "adrift and isolated," as The New York Times put it, Buddy was again buried under the weight of the headlines he couldn't even read.

"Dogs are wired just like humans, so they get anxious and tense," Linda Goodloe, a certified animal behaviorist, said then. "Their sleep gets thrown off, and their appetites can diminish."

Bill could always work off that tension with a round of golf or a quiet cigar with an intern, but such tension actually eats away at a dog, causing "an inner conflict" and "psychosomatic disorders, such as ulcers or colitis," according to Richard Polsky, another certified animal behaviorist.

Only in recent days - as the events of Sept. 11 have overshadowed such things as (Oval) office romance or pardon-selling - did Buddy return to the frisky form that made him America's most beloved first dog. Suddenly, he and his master were the picture of normalcy, with Buddy energetically fetching his favorite tennis ball.

But with Bill and Hillary vacationing in Acapulco, Buddy was hit by an SUV near the Chappaqua home where he finally started living the dog's life he deserved.

The short, tragic life of Buddy Clinton was over. Rest in peace, boy. You've earned it.

gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net