Dog Talk with Uncle Matty by Matthew Margolis

It's rumored that Harry Truman liked to advise his Beltway colleagues that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. What to do, though, if no dog will have you?

The website Dogs Against Romney was founded in 2007, when Mitt Romney was making his first bid for the presidency and Crate-Gate first made the news. For those who don't remember that election cycle and haven't caught any of the recent ads, Crate-Gate refers to an incident in 1983 in which Romney, his wife and their five sons piled into the family station wagon for a trip to their vacation home on Lake Huron — and drove 12 hours with a crate containing their Irish Setter, Seamus, strapped to the car's rooftop luggage rack.

There are some 75 million dog owners in America, and many of them were outraged. That's a lot of angry voters. But we're a forgiving people, and people did a lot of things back in the '80s that are frowned upon now. Kids used to ride in the cargo area of station wagons making faces at the people in the car behind them — a position one of the Romney boys reportedly enjoyed for the duration of this same family trip. Today, kids ride in proper seats with seat belts, no exceptions.

But Crate-Gate goes on to include details of Seamus becoming visibly sick while strapped to the roof. Romney's solution was to hose off the dog and the car and soldier on. Not very sympathetic. Not very compassionate.

When asked recently about his decision to transport Seamus in this open-air manner, Romney didn't say, "We didn't know any better back then, and we do now. It was stupid, and I'm sorry." Instead he claims — despite the evidence — "Seamus loved it."

How the Romney luggage scored a secure place inside the car and Seamus ended up rooftop is beyond me.

Dogs, much like children, love all kinds of things that might harm or even kill them — chocolate, strangers, chewing on things (even electrical cords), running free (even through the streets). They have no sense of their own mortality, which is why they have grownups charged with keeping them alive. It is our job to know better.

The safest way to travel with your dog is to put him in his crate and secure the crate inside the car with a seat belt. Yes, many dogs love to hang their head out of a car window. That doesn't make it good for them. It isn't good for their ears or eyes at high speeds, and there is always the potential for a head injury. But the most pressing reasons for the secure crate is to protect the driver from potential distractions and to protect the dog in the case of a collision.

I have a vivid memory of driving on the highway years ago and swerving to avoid a suitcase in my lane. A little further along, there was a station wagon pulled over, a woman and a couple of curious kids inside, and a bewildered father examining the rooftop, trying to figure out how the family luggage had come loose. Good thing that was all that was strapped to the roof.

I'm sure Seamus loved his family. I'm equally sure he didn't love that frightening rooftop ride — his family nowhere in sight — and the digestive upset it induced. And Romney isn't doing dogs or himself any favors by pretending otherwise.

Woof!

Dog trainer Matthew "Uncle Matty" Margolis is the co-author of 18 books about dogs, a behaviorist, a popular radio and television guest, and the host of the PBS series "WOOF! It's a Dog's Life!" Read all of Uncle Matty's columns at www.creators.com, and visit him at www.unclematty.com. Send your questions to dearuncle.gazette@unclematty.com or by mail to Uncle Matty at P.O. Box 3300, Diamond Springs, CA 95619.

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