A beer-drinking pony who enjoys a pint and lives in a pub has been backed – to become a mayor. Miniature Shetland pony Patrick earned celebrity status as a regular at his local boozer, where he would pop in for a daily tipple of his favourite Irish-stout.
Now 130 people have since signed a petition on change.org calling for Patrick to be appointed mayor of Cockington, a village near to Torquay in Devon. It follows the death of unofficial mayor Don Mills in 2019, reports DevonLive.
Patrick’s fame came after owner Kirk Petrakis often brought him into Cockington pub The Drum Inn to try to socialise him for his therapy work during the pandemic. He now spends much of his time visiting hospitals, recovery groups, mental health wards, specialised schools and even wakes.
Kirk says he always brings comfort to people going through difficult experiences and argues that his role as a community icon makes him perfectly suited to be mayor.
He said: “Patrick’s become such a central part of the community in Cockington that I think they’re just quite keen to keep him around. Now he’s officially a therapy horse we like to walk him around regularly and introduce him to people.
“We got in contact with Cllr Andrew Barrand from Cockington, who pitched the idea to us of making Patrick mayor I think it’d be a really nice and quite fitting for him to be mayor really, there are lots of other animal mayors in other countries – I think there’s a dog mayor in the US.
“The locals have become so accustomed to him being around and I think after the death of the previous unofficial mayor, Don Mills, in 2019 it’d be nice thing to do. We believe Patrick would make a fantastic Mayor of Cockington because of the heritage and history with horses, because everyone would love to see him attend events with his chains.
“He recently attended Armed Forces Day, he has done a lot of good things for the community. When it eventually happens we’ll make sure to get him a nice big velvet rug or something to sit on.”
You can find out more about Patrick the Pony at his website. If you want to support Patrick’s ambitions to become mayor, you can sign his petition here.