Isn’t it funny that when election results come in, every party manages to find a way of calling it a success, even if they have failed miserably? A party with an increased share of the votes can easily talk about what it has achieved, but even those who have a lower share seem to find a way to sound good by saying things like ‘it wasn’t as bad as the pollsters predicted’ and ‘there is a seat in a dim and distant outpost where they actually increased their percentage.’ This last election has been a very strange one as far as my Mistress is concerned. She is used to taking an interest in what is going on and even in Belgium, registered to vote and found out about the different parties. Here however, she has found that electioneering doesn’t stretch as far as a tiny out of the way village with only a couple of hundred voters. We are important enough to have our own polling station but not for the candidates to bother telling us anything about themselves. Now I’m guessing that our tiny share of the votes wasn’t considered enough to make any real difference to the overall result, but I can’t help but think if someone put a bit of effort into campaigning around the villages, they would do very well out of it simply for having taken the trouble. This is a clear lesson for the Pet Dogs Democratic Party and the approach we take, although I have thought that staging a coup would be a quicker and less painful process. We would need to get the working dogs on board if we were really to make any significant progress in country areas. Dogs have a role to play and it isn’t always to be at home by the fireside with the slippers ready.