A quick fix: how Boris and Carrie can bring Dilyn the dog to heel

A lot of nonsense is being written about Dilyn, the adorable Jack Russell owned by Boris and Carrie, a lookalike for my dog, Perry, now nearly 16. Is Dilyn the currently subdued Boris’s alter ego, one journalist wondered. We read that Dilyn allegedly humped Dominic Cummings’s leg, and at Chequers ‘mounted’ a stool made from the hide of an elephant shot by Teddy Roosevelt. He also peed on an aide’s handbag after she arrived at Downing Street for a meeting.

Of course it is not the first time Boris has had a poorly trained dog in his life. When he was editor of The Spectator, a dandie dinmont called Laszlo terrorised the office, leaping on columnists and messing on furniture. The dog, who belonged to publisher Kimberly Fortier, was eventually castrated.

Clearly Dilyn has not been properly trained, probably because Boris was recovering from Covid and too busy with managing (and mismanaging) the pandemic, and because Carrie was occupied with her new baby.