And so to California and the curious case of Alanis Morissette's chihuahua-pug cross, or chug as they're known. And what a story it is: a complex and multifaceted saga of accusation and counter-accusation, lawsuits, heart-rending online videos, private investigators, threats of kidnapping and accusations of repeated urinating on the carpet – alas on the part of the dog, Circus, rather than the Ironic hitmaker.
The first the world heard of Circus was when a $25,000 lawsuit was filed against Morissette's former housekeeper and dog walker – incidentally, that's two separate people – by the singer's husband, a rapper called MC Souleye whom LiS confesses it has never heard of before but who sounds amazing: he's actually called Mario Treadway, but was given the name Souleye by a "spirit guide" who visited him while he was working in a health food shop in Palm Springs.
The lawsuit, which claimed the housekeeper had kidnapped the dog when she was fired by Morissette and MC Souleye, caused the pair to retaliate, claiming that Morissette had told them to take the dog away because she was allergic to it and it kept urinating on the carpet. They posted a YouTube video, showing them stroking the dog and protesting that they had been harassed by private investigators working for Morissette. This provoked MC Souleye to file further legal documents which, it has to be said, do rather sound like the work of a man who changed his name on the advice of a spirit guide – "Circus is living and breathing … my heart breaks more and more" etc – and which claim the video may have endangered Circus by making him known to professional dognappers.
It's a sad story, brightened by one minor detail, from which LiS derives the cheering lesson that, in a world of flux and mutability, some things stay the same. "Circus is not a piece of property," the legal documents thundered, which, given that under California law a dog actually is deemed a piece of property, seems to strongly indicate that, 18 years on from her chart-topping single, Morissette still doesn't fully understand the meaning of the word "ironic".
