This week Donald Trump initially said he believed Vladimir Putin’s “strong” denial of interfering in the US election at their summit. Critics responded by saying he was now just “Putin’s poodle”. This seems to get the hairstyle wrong, but what’s so bad about poodles anyway?
A poodle (originally “poodle dog”) is so named from the German puddeln, to splash about in water: they were bred as hunting dogs to retrieve ducks. The use of “poodle” as a political insult seems to have been invented by David Lloyd George, who complained in 1907 that the House of Lords was the Tory leader’s poodle. “It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to.”
Since then, hundreds of poodles have gambolled happily through the political landscape. Only last month, Caroline Lucas warned that, unless the environment regulator was independent, “we may well end up with a green poodle, not a green watchdog”. After Trump’s show of canine servility, meanwhile, Putin gave him a football, saying, “The ball’s in your court,” which was just sadistic: the order to play tennis with a football would surely confuse any breed of dog.
