It’s been staring us in the face for so long, you’d be right to be worried that so many people had missed it - and I would venture to say Number 10 and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are not the only governmental offenders either. It’s something that transcends the colour of any party you purport to lead too - and there’s a lot to be said for that. Colour doesn’t belong in politics in more ways than one.
I’m talking about pets - or very specifically, dogs.
It’s hardly a surprise that Moby Dick is the first president in nearly two hundred years not to have had a pet of any kind since James K. Polk (1845-1849) and I’ll slap a crisp ten pound note on the table that says that’s the first time you’ve ever even heard his name never mind knew he was a President. (Even Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) whose picture belies him as the most miserable president ever to serve, apparently fed a couple of white mice he found in his bedroom.)
A cat - which is what we currently have at Number 10 in the shape of Larry, unless he was evicted with Mrs May’s pride - doesn’t really count in politics. A cat is far too independent for a political household. It will find a rub behind the ear from anybody in the house and be truly satisfied with whoever it chooses to adopt.
A dog on the other hand will remind you every opportunity it gets that something needs attention around here other than your own ego.
To not have a pet at all just hoists a red flag the size of a bus in the air that you don’t give a fuck about anything except you own agenda… and if we look closely, you’ll find that’s exactly what’s going on over there, but let’s bring it back home:
There’s never been a dog in Number 10 as long as I’ve been alive and one is very much needed. Preferably one that needs to be walked properly twice a day. When you’re running a country, you should be getting out there with other dog owners (pretty much a microcosm of the general population anyway and their opinions will save you a lot of messing about with referendums), working off your noodles for lunch and generally paying attention to the fact that there are other things in the world than your own needs - aka: the contents of your bank balance.
So far as I can work out, the last PM to have a dog was Churchill. He had a few in fact and at one point in time, also a lion (a gift) which he swiftly handed over to London Zoo. As we all know, Churchill got stuff done. He also smoked a fair old whack and had a tattoo. Hell, even his mother had a snake tattoo on her wrist. I like the guy.
For all his faults (and I guess that depends on where you live), even Mr Putin has dogs. Four of them last time I counted. For good or ill, you can’t deny he is hyper-aware of other people, though what he chooses to do with that knowledge is for a bigger mind than mine to analyse. He’s also an active participant in the conservation of many endangered Russian dog breeds. Incidentally, he too had a big cat - a tiger - gifted to him that he also gave to a zoo. Where do these foreign dignitaries get lions and tigers to give away like others do with Belgian chocolate?
I don’t have to mention Mr Obama’s dogs. They probably even have their own twitter account but again, proof positive that a dog will make you aware of other life forms outside of your own five inch aura.
Macron - a guy I kinda like out there in the political arena - has Nemo. Over in Canada, Justin Trudeau has a dog that may or may not exist called Kenzie. He was spoken about and photographed once and then never heard from again… hopefully he is still around, but the fact remains that even if he had to give him away, Trudeau recognised the potential of letting the public know he had one.
Off the radar of (most of) the world, is the Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, who has a Boston terrier called Lennu. In my opinion, there’s another country with its shit mostly together in the big scheme of things.
Taking it to the extreme, ex-Aussie PM, Malcolm Turnbull, even ran a dog blog written in the voice of his dog JoJo. Maybe that’s taking it too far and would explain why the word ‘ex’ appears in that sentence.
Hell… even Kim Jong-un (who was rumoured to have fed his subversive uncle to a pack of revenues dogs - a rumour that began with a satirists cartoon) is a huge dog lover. What, with Love Island making all the news last month because a man with a beard humped a girl with hair when she should have been going out with some other dude with a beard, it probably didn’t make the news that Kim had recently gifted Moon Jae-in (the South Korean president - see, you didn’t know that either did you) a couple of North Korean Pungsan dogs to improve their relations.
You see it all coming together?
If Mr Johnson outlawed puppy farming to the tune of £100,000 in fines for those caught in the act and took on a dog from a rescue centre while also bringing back the dog licence at £100 a year and throwing a cool-ish £1m into something like Guide Dog training, he’d surely have most of the country at least on his side regardless of what happens on October 31st.
And if it all turned to dust in his hands, one single picture of him with his dog would have most of us forgetting at least for a little while.
Laughs aside, there’s a lot of truth in this if you toy with it. A dog will absolutely make you pay attention to the world around you.
Down at the bottom end of the scale, if you can’t handle your dog because it asks too much of you, you should probably cash in your chips and not be a world leader at all.
Or you could simply step up to the mark and be the person your dog thinks you are, then we’d all be cooking with gas.
Burned at the stake at work for wasting time online? You can sign up to my mailing list here and a weeks worth of blog posts will land in your inbox first thing on a Saturday morning.