/ 5 June 2009

Danish royal hound savages queen’s guard

A dachshund bitch kept by the husband of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe that savaged a royal guard was the subject of lawmakers’ calls for it to be put down on Thursday.

Eleven-year-old Evita should be “euthanised,” the opposition’s animal welfare spokesman Bjarne Laustsen told AFP, deriding the “paradox that a royal guard is bitten by a dog belonging to those he is employed to protect.”

“If my dog had been so aggressive, I’d have had it put down,” he added.

“There is no difference between a royal dog and any other,” he also told the bt.dk newspaper website.

Prince Consort Henrik’s dachshund left the blood-stained soldier needing hospital treatment for a leg wound last Saturday at the royal family’s summer castle in Fredensborg, according to the Ekstra Bladet tabloid.

It was the second such frenzied confrontation, after a May 2008 attack that left another royal guard needing three weeks off work.

Fellow opposition deputy Marlene Harpsoee echoed Laustsen’s call, with Karina Lorentzen Dehnhardt of the far-right PPD, which supports the government in parliament, also saying a muzzle must be fixed, or else. — AFP