BARKING MAD

One of the proverbs most commonly associated with managing one’s reputation is ‘once bitten, twice shy’. In other words, try and learn from previous difficulties in order to avoid future bother.

It’s proved to be an appropriate phrase in the last week in the case of one of the more notable examples of a dog-lover who decided to engage once more with the world’s media…and discovered it’s a beast which has an incredibly long memory.

You would have imagined that Joyce McKinney might have remembered her last brush with the press back in 1977, one that saw her charged in connection with the sex-fuelled abduction of a Mormon.

But, no, Joyce (now Bernann) McKinney turned up in newspapers and on TV the world over this week having paid $50,000 for the successful quintuple cloning of her beloved dead pitbull, Booger.

Bernann/Joyce thought the press might have forgotten her earlier fall from grace. Unfortunately, she found out the hard way that the case of a fugitive former beauty queen caught up in a sex scandal tends to linger long in the memory.

The prospects of her getting an easy, uninquisitive ride were made less than negligible when you also consider that her animal obsession not only set new boundaries for science (the first commercial dog cloning) but may break legal ones. As well as being a fugitive herself, Bernann/Joyce’s favourite pooch may have been one itself. There was speculation that she’d broken into a dog pound to rescue it from a death sentence after it attacked two people.

There’s a lesson in all this for everyone ever tripped up over some misdemeanour: the media never forgets. While people who come a cropper should not necessarily keep their heads down for ever after, if there hasn’t been closure – especially if they’re actually on the run – they should recognise that being part of a story with global profile means whatever mistakes they made are likely to be revisited.

The penalty for Bernann/Joyce may be more serious than getting a battering once more from the press. Her infant pitbull clones may find themselves estranged from their scandal-dogged owner if British authorities follow up a 30-year-old case and lead their ‘mum back to Blighty in handcuffs…but not for the sort of fun and games she’d envisaged back then.