When you’re invited to use someone else’s home and garden then most of us are on our very best behaviour, making sure that everything is left precisely as we found it.
So just imagine your level of caution if it’s not a family or friend allowing you to use their grounds – but the Queen herself.
Now picture the total mortification you’d experience if your naughty dog escaped its leash and managed to cause total chaos – and kill one of the palace swans.
According to a new royal biographer Robert Hardman that is precisely the pickle that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson found himself in.
But Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – thankfully – was very forgiving and typically generous in her response, reports The Mirror.
The incident reportedly took place after Queen Elizabeth allowed Johnson, wife Carrie and their baby son Wilfred to go for walks at Buckingham Palace after he ended up in intensive care with COVID-19 symptoms.
Mr Hardman wrote: “When the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson was out of hospital after ending up in intensive care during the first Covid lockdown, the Queen was characteristically thoughtful.
“She told him he was welcome to use the gardens of Buckingham Palace for walks with his wife, Carrie, and baby son, Wilfred (the monarch herself was shielding at Windsor).
“During one such walk, to Johnson’s horror, Carrie’s Jack Russell, Dilyn, attacked and killed a gosling near the palace pond.
“He decided that it would be best to say nothing at all, forgetting that nothing went unnoticed by the boss at Buckingham Palace.
“At their next encounter, the Queen nonchalantly talked about walking in the palace gardens before adding crisply: ‘I gather Jack Russells don’t go very well with goslings.’ That was the end of the matter.”
