Pet Peeve

It's been said that a man's true nature is revealed by how he treats animals. This charming little anecdote helps explain why Mitt Romney gives me the creeps:

Romney placed his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, into a kennel lashed to the top of his station wagon for a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983. Despite being shielded by a wind screen the former Massachusetts governor erected, Seamus expressed his discomfort with a diarrhea attack.

Now the story, recounted this week in a Boston Globe profile of Romney, has touched off protests from bloggers and animal rights activists even though it was presented in the story as an example of Romney's coolness under trying circumstances.

When Romney's eldest son, Tagg, and his four brothers complained about the brown runoff down the back windshield, their father quietly pulled the car over, borrowed a gas station hose and sprayed down both the dog and the kennel before returning to the road.