'I made the wrong call with this house': Cork politician bitten by dog while canvassing for local elections

POLITICS can be a dog-eat-dog world, and one Northside TD ended up needing a tetanus shot when he failed to let one sleeping Hollyhill pooch lie last Saturday.

Cork North Central Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Mick Barry was out leafleting for his colleague Brian McCarthy, who is running for re-election to Cork City Council in the north-west ward, when he discovered that one elderly local had a bite worse than its bark.

“Lots of houses have dogs in the garden and you make a judgement call as to whether they are potentially a biter or not, and I made the wrong judgement call on this particular house,” Mr Barry told The Echo ruefully.

When you've been bitten by a dog out canvassing and waiting for your tetanus..... pic.twitter.com/jgSsAhrnxw

— Mick Barry (@MickBarrySP) May 18, 2024

”He looked like he was dozing in the sunshine, but he sprang into action fairly quickly and gave me a right good nip on the back of my leg.” 

The veteran left-winger confirmed that the bite was indeed to his left leg, but he said it hadn’t been painful and he had been able to complete the leafleting operation.

“And then I took myself down to The Mercy urgent care centre on Baker’s Road, which was fairly full on a Saturday afternoon, but there’s great staff in there and I got my tetanus and my course of antibiotics and they sent me on my way,” he said.

Mr Barry said that while it had looked to him like an old dog, he wasn’t planning on teaching it any new tricks, and vowed that, despite being once bitten, he would not be twice-shy about canvassing for Mr McCarthy, and he would not paws in his efforts, being glad to have lived to tell the tail.