Palace Source Denies This Is Meghan Markle's Dog Taking a Dump

Did a local Miami news reporter get the scoop of a lifetime walking by Kensington Palace and spotting Meghan Markle picking up her own dog’s poop? “A source at the Palace” disputes it!

In a post with the time stamp of 12:23 p.m. California time, TMZ picked up a crucial tweet from a local reporter out of south Florida:

“I’m still in total shock ! I pet her dog !” Petrillo added in a following tweet. She didn’t specify whether she confirmed it was Meghan. Did she ask? Can you ask a potential princess to see some ID? Do they carry ID? What does Meghan Markle’s government ID even say at this point? Is she allowed outside without seven bodyguards and a protocol handler?

TMZ—which tweeted this story under the headline “Meghan Markle Lets Her Dog Poop on Buckingham Palace Grounds,” which isn’t even the right palace, GOD—had two questions: Whether this dog was shitting on regal ground—“The short answer is yes. We know there are public and private parts of Kensington Palace, and if Meghan was just outside her private entrance, it would appear she was on the public end of it. Still counts as royal territory”—and also, uh:

Perhaps more importantly, whose dog is this exactly?

We know she’s already got a beagle named Guy, but he looks vastly different than this pooch. There are also reports that Meghan and Harry recently got a new dog together, but it’s apparently a Labrador Retriever. That breed ain’t what we’re seeing here. Hmmm …

The Daily Mail spoke with royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith, who said that their dog is in fact a black labrador named Oz.

And indeed, this news was probably too good to be true. Almost immediately—at 12:50 p.m., California time—TMZ issued an update: “A source at the Palace tells us the photo posted by the reporter is not Meghan and it’s not her dog either. The mess is someone else’s s**t.” We’ll never know for sure, because the likelihood of the palace releasing an official comment seems very, very slim.

The dog-walking doppelgänger of a real-deal royal is an incredible romcom premise and if it’s not on Hallmark by the next Christmas movie cycle I’ll be sorely disappointed.