US:Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may have to kiss goodbye to the dog-loving vote after it emerged that he once strapped Seamus, his family's Irish setter, to the roof of his car for a 12-hour trip more than 20 years ago.
The Boston Globe reported that Romney only noticed the dog's distress when his son Tagg complained about brown liquid running down the windows of the white Chevy station wagon. Seamus was using the most effective means of protest he could find - an attack of diarrhoea.
Although Seamus was in a dog carrier and Romney had erected a windshield to make the ride more comfortable, Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon".
Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), accused Mr Romney of giving his children a horrifying lesson in cruelty.
"Thinking of the wind, the weather, the speed, the vulnerability, the isolation on the roof, it is common sense that any dog who's under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels," she said.
Mr Romney dismissed the criticism, saying that animal rights activists have been hounding him ever since he ran the Salt Lake City Olympics.
"Peta has been after me for having a rodeo at the Olympics and were very, very upset about that. Peta was after me when I went quail hunting in Georgia. And Peta is not happy that my dog likes fresh air," he said.
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