As election fever grips the UK, it seems prudent that the Canadians remind us of just how barmy politics can become. Roman Emperor Caligula once named a horse as one of his senators, with the thinking that it couldn’t do any worse than any of the senators at the time – and a dog owner in Clarington, a municipality east of Toronto in Canada, has had the same idea concerning his dog Genny.

Genny, a black Labrador, wanted to run for mayor of Clarington – but those pesky rules seem to have scuppered the dog’s chances. Apparently, according to the ‘rules’, you have to be human in order to stand for any political office in Canada – and Genny is, sadly, a dog. Caligula never stood for such red tape getting in the way!

Just like Caligula, Genny’s owner isn’t going to let the fact that Genny is a dog get in the way of his bid for her to become the first canine mayor of (more…)

‘The dog ate it’ is a well known excuse for a great many things, usually offered by schoolboys as to the reason they haven’t completed their homework. However, sometimes the dog actually has eaten it, and when the ‘it’ in question is a pair of tickets to a dog training show, you have to wonder about the real intelligence of some dogs.

Mike and Morag Evans, a couple from East Lothian, in Scotland, had purchased tickets for a show in Nottingham from Cesar Millan; his ‘Dog Whisperer’ tour. The show covers many aspects of dog training, something that the couple’s dog ‘Islay’ wasn’t too keen on experiencing.

The dog whisperer tickets cost £40, but that didn’t stop the couple’s Labrador from setting about them in a blatant attempt to avoid the show altogether. Mike was concerned that because the tickets had been badly chewed up, including damage to the barcode, that they would be refused entry. Something which didn’t seem to concern Islay.

When Mike contacted the Nottingham Arena they (more…)