Seven years ago, a border collie named Lucy Lou was elected mayor of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. She's the first female to hold that position -- albeit, the third dog.
Now, Lucy Lou has set her sights even higher. She is hoping to be elected this country's first canine president.
"All the other presidential candidates are dogs. Why shouldn’t a real one run?" Lucy Lou said to The Huffington Post via her campaign manager, owner and translator Bobbi Kayser.
Lucy Lou is running as a member of the grassroots Indepawdent Party and has a saucy slogan -- "The bitch you can really count on" -- which she's been using since her successful 2008 mayoral campaign.
Sure, you could see having been elected mayor as a stunt, in a town where animals are voted into office as part of a fundraiser for the local historical society. Votes cost $1 each, anyone may participate in this unusual democracy as many times as they like, and there's no restrictions on boozing it up around the polls. (Rumor is that moonshine-fueled voting, in fact, is encouraged.)
Except Lucy Lou also has a well-developed platform: She stands for smaller government, lowering taxes and increased spending on mental health care. She in favor of liberal immigration.
This political animal isn't hewing to any one dogma on guns. She'd like to loosen up regulations on hunting weapons and small arms, while making it harder for ordinary folks to get assault weapons.
Lucy Lou also says she'll promote equal marriage rights for all: Cats and dogs should be able to marry within their own species, without regard to sex or gender, she said.
Despite having few official duties, and spending most of every day sleeping, Lucy Lou touts her mayoral experience as providing the right background for this new venture.
Indeed, she has brought the traditionally ceremonial office some heft. Her accomplishments include appearing as grand marshall at local parades, serving as spokespet for a pet protection program affiliated with a local women's crisis center and raising money for the nonprofit Rabbit Hash Historical Society -- which will also be the beneficiary of any donations to this current campaign.
Showing a supreme bodily control, Lucy Lou even brags on her website about having taken care "to never, ever pee" on her constituents' vehicles.
Plus, given all this time in the limelight -- and being a dog -- Lucy Lou has been fully vetted.
"There are no skeletons in my closet. A few bones maybe, but no skeletons," she said. "In the spirit of full disclosure, my vet has to treat me for occasional fleas and has put me on a regimen of diet kibble and a glucosamine supplement for my older joints."
There are, naturally, some obstacles standing in the way of Lucy Lou fulfilling her political ambitions.
An obvious one would, heartbreakingly, affect almost any pet running for president (except maybe a parrot or a tortoise, and we haven't seen any of them throwing their hat in just yet). Under the Constitution, a president must be at least 35 years old. The world's oldest dog made it to just shy of 30.
Still, dog years could help obviate that issue. Perhaps a bigger problem is that if elected, Lucy Lou will not move to the Washington, D.C.
She's lived in Rabbit Hash since she was a wee pup, happily serving as mayor for most of that time, since her predecessor, a well-loved black Lab, died in office. (No scandal there; Mayor Junior succumbed to old age.)
This three-stop sign hamlet, which prefers its politicians to have tails, is where Lucy Lou intends to sit and stay, regardless of the election's outcome -- though it appears border collies are smart enough that Lucy Lou manages to spin even this into a selling point.
"It is my opinion that half the taxpayers' dollars go to the maintenance, upkeep and staffing of that big white mausoleum in D.C.," she said. "I would like to privatize that building and utilize it as a national animal hospital and park."
Lucy Lou, or at least the person who speaks on her behalf , thinks the chief difference between her and the others who would be president -- be they Democrats, Republicans, cats or crawfish -- is exactly the thing that best recommends her for the job.
Yes, it's that she's a dog.
"As a dog I wake up every single day of my life with one single thought and purpose in life: What can I do for my humans today?" she said. "How many humans do you know with that quality?"
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