The Man Who Married His Dog

I didn't know that dogs could get married, especially to humans, but that's what happened in a city called Toowoomba, which is located in Queensland, Australia.  Because a man there named Joe Guiso got married to his labrador retriever, Honey, in a special ceremony last November.

Mr. Guiso, who is 20 years old, adopted Honey when she was a puppy, and now she is 5 years old.  One day when they were walking in Laurel Bank Park, they saw a wedding taking place, and Mr. Guiso said to Honey, "That could be us."  Which was how he proposed to her, and she did not say no, so he went ahead and planned the ceremony.

The bride wore a white cape, and the groom wore a nice grey suit.  Thirty of their family members and friends came, some of whom were dogs.  In his vows, Mr. Guiso told Honey, "You're my best friend and you make every part of my day better."  Then he got down on one knee and gave Honey a kiss.

Some animal rights people didn't like the idea of a man marrying his dog, but Mr. Guiso told all the people at the wedding that "it's platonic."  Which means that they will not be trying to make any puppies together -- not that that would work very well anyway.  Mr. Guiso also said that the wedding was a chance for all his friends to dress up and get together and celebrate.  "You can't actually marry a dog," he told the press because I guess maybe they didn't know this.


Sadly, the honeymoon did not go very well.  Mr. Guiso reported that "I think [Honey's] a bit angry about all the publicity; she's been giving me the silent treatment."  Well, I don't blame her.  First her groom had a nice wedding ceremony with vows and everything, and after that he said, "You can't actually marry a dog."  What kind of mixed message is that?

So anyway, there are a couple of things we can learn from this story, and one is that you shouldn't just marry anybody who asks you, even if you've already been living together for 5 years.


And the other thing we can learn is that Toowoomba is a really strange name for a city, but it's kind of fun to say.  I really wanted to know what the name Toowoomba means, so I did a little research, and I found out that no one knows absolutely for sure, but they think it's sort of an attempt at pronouncing an Aboriginal word for "The Swamp."  Which mostly only describes one part of the town that used to be sort of swampy.

Toowoomba has a population of 90,000, and a really nice climate, because it almost never snows there, and the average high temperature is 81º F.  It is called "The Garden City" because its 150 parks are full of flowers.  Also they have trees there that turn pretty colors in the fall and lose their leaves, which doesn't happen in very much of Australia.  Oh, and in 2008, Toowoomba was named Australia's Tidiest Town.

But getting back to the subject of the man who married his dog, I asked Mom if she would ever want to marry any of her dogs, and she said no, not really.  She said she'd much rather be able to claim us all as dependents on her tax return, so she could deduct all our vet bills!