Let Me Tell You about Jasper . . .

by Dana Perino

  I trusted my instinct and said that we should go with the bigger, calmer one. Peter agreed.

  It turns out we made the right decision. Henry was born smart, sweet, and dignified—a rarity in any species.

  As we made to leave, I got teary on behalf of Henry’s mom because he was going to be the first of her eleven puppies to leave the litter. Helen had tears in her eyes, too, as the mama dog (called a dam) was her pet and we thought the dam was sad to see little Henry leave.

  Henry came home the same way Jasper would fourteen years later—sacked out on my lap. Peter preferred to drive since I was a bit shaky on the other side of the road in Britain. That worked out well for me—more puppy time!

  “You’re his mom now,” she said.

  When we got in the black Isuzu Trooper to drive home, Helen told me to take out my earrings in case he nibbled at them. And before we left she said, “Remember, the love you give them you get twice as much in return.” Peter insists this is an understatement.

  Henry was good in the car—he just let me hold him and he tucked his nose into my neck and slept like that for hours.

  Peter drove most of the way but insisted I take a turn at the wheel so that he could hold and bond with his new puppy. I was an okay driver in the UK, but with me on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road, Peter took over again after just forty-five minutes (he’d seemed calm enough, but I noticed he was clutching rosary beads and muttering to himself).

  I called later to let the MacCauleys know we’d arrived back in England safely and to inquire about how Henry’s dam reacted to him being taken away from the litter.

  “She didn’t even notice,” she said, and we laughed, though I felt slightly offended on Henry’s behalf.

  I really was Henry’s mom.

  I bonded with Henry immediately. I was home all day with him while Peter worked. Taking care of a puppy is time-consuming. I watched him constantly, potty trained him (no comment on which newspaper we used), and gave him the best food prescribed at the time (plus a raw egg for a shiny coat). There were days when Peter came home and I still hadn’t done the dishes from the morning. “What has she been doing all day?” he thought, but dared not ask until years later.

  I carried Henry around when he was perfectly capable of walking on his own, and I tried to coax him into the garden on rainy days though he didn’t want to get wet. I sat at the computer and refreshed the Drudge Report over and over. (It was 1998, folks! The Lewinsky scandal was a huge story.) Meanwhile, Henry slept in my lap and rested his chin on my wrist. (Henry was skeptical—he may have been a dog but even he knew what the definition of “is” is.)

  In our English flat, I tried to make it feel a bit like home with lots of pictures and a painting of the American flag that I purchased at Eastern Market in Washington, D.C. when I worked on Capitol Hill.

  If it was too rainy outside I would play tug-of-war with his puppy toys, throw the ball down the hallway over and over, and then we’d play our favorite game—I’d sit in front of the couch and Henry would come over and put his rear end by my feet. Then I’d launch him across the room and he’d twirl around in the air, landing on all four paws. He never tired of the game, and my legs got a good workout.

  I wanted my dog to be well trained, so when he was very young, I taught him to bark once for please and twice for thank you, to give a high five instead of shaking, to sit, stay, and play dead (all of this worked on Peter, too, by the way).

  Henry was taught to wait to eat his food until I gave him permission. And when he was hand-fed treats, I’d say, “Gentle, gentle,” and he had such a soft mouth that when my friends’ toddlers fed him Cheerios one by one we didn’t worry that he’d snap at them and nip their fingers. When Peter came home, I would show off all of Henry’s new tricks. (And I’d talk nonstop for a couple of hours since I didn’t have anyone else to talk to all day. I know… poor Peter.)

  I fell hopelessly in love with Henry, and it deepened my love for Peter, too. I watched him be so patient with Henry, taking him outside at any time of day or night without complaint. I loved how he could put Henry on his forearm, the puppy’s chin in his palm, the four legs dangling over the sides, and walk him all around the flat.

  Which shows how Henry allowed us to be a little silly, too. We needed help on that front since we were adults and had kind of forgotten how to play like kids.

  Plus, having Henry got us outside together, no matter the weather. We spent hours on the beach at Lytham-St. Anne’s when the tide was out, letting Henry race between us to get all of his energy out before we went to bed.

  Henry and I were blown about on a trip to the Lake District when he was just three months old. For fourteen years, Henry, Peter and I were inseparable.

  Peter and Henry in Cornwall—one of my favorite pictures of them. Peter had wanted a dog for many years, and Henry was a dream come true for him.

  At night when we watched “the telly,” we’d meet eyes and point to Henry, who slept on a little pillow on the floor by the fireplace. We’d share a smile and say, “Awwww.” There was a genuine softening of both of our hearts, and I think that having a dog early on in our marriage helped strengthen our relationship.

  Henry also helped me make friends in England. It wasn’t as if people weren’t kind in that northern coastal village, but they were reserved and I felt a bit out of place. My enthusiasm, my accent, and my ideas stood out and uncomfortably so. I dialed my personality down several notches and didn’t feel much like myself. But when Henry was with me on a walk, we met all sorts of people.

  They didn’t talk to me as much as through Henry—“Oh it’s a nice day out, isn’t it?” they’d coo to him, not making eye contact with me. And I’d respond the same way, through the dog. “Yes, it’s a very nice day. A bit brisk, but invigorating, I’d say.” And it would go on like that for a few more exchanges, and Henry never knew he was the interlocutor.

  Henry helped me come out of my shell and meet a few of the villagers, and soon we were a recognized pair and were waved to by the greengrocer, the baker, and the traffic wardens. I’m sure they were saying to each other, “There goes that beautiful dog and that crazy American woman with the Dole-Kemp T-shirt.”

  Though we shared this great love for Henry, Peter thought I was a bit overboard. After we moved to San Diego in January 1999 and I was working at an office while Peter started his business from his computer in our apartment, something changed. Suddenly, Henry was with Peter for most of the hours of the day, and that’s when the tide turned and Peter became a bit obsessed with Henry, too. He said he was “besotted” and would even tear up when he talked about how much that dog meant to him. They were together so much that after we’d lived there awhile, when I was out on my own with Henry, once a guy in a shop said, “Oh, is that Peter’s dog?” Harrumph!

  Peter was a good dog trainer, too. While I helped Henry learn tricks, Peter handled the more difficult task of teaching Henry to heel while on a walk, which makes for a more pleasant experience without all of the pulling of a leash. In fact, Henry got so good at it, we almost never needed a leash for him.

  Majestic Henry in the surf in Kennebunkport, Maine, just down the road from Walker’s Point.

  Peter also took him on runs in the California sunshine, saying, “Only dogs and mad Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” a play on a British expression. He thought Henry loved those outings, but years later in Washington, D.C., when Peter was putting on his running shoes, he couldn’t find Henry in our Capitol Hill townhouse. He looked everywhere and called and called for him. But no dog. Panicking a little, Peter started looking in every room, even in the basement. He finally found him down there, hiding in the storage room. He didn’t want to go on long runs anymore. It was so endearing that Peter could barely stand it. The only thing Henry had to run after that was errands with us on the weekends.

  As responsible dog owners, we agreed that Henry wouldn’t be allowed on the furniture. We stuck to the rule. But th
en one day I came out of the shower and Henry was sleeping on the bed, which had white bedding and was made up perfectly. I shouted, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Peter ran in. Henry opened one eye and arched his brow but otherwise didn’t move. We started giggling, and I relented.

  “He just wants to be comfortable, too,” I said. There went the “no dogs on the furniture” rule. (As a household rule enforcer, I’m less Supreme Court and more European Union.)

  Not long after that, we left Henry in the apartment to go out to dinner. I used to leave the TV on for him and would often turn the channel to Animal Planet, just for kicks. At this point, Henry still wasn’t supposed to be on the couch. He had a perfectly good dog bed on the floor.

  When we came home a couple of hours later, the TV was blaring in Spanish. We could hear it from two flights below. Since we lived in an apartment, we were super-conscientious about not being noisy neighbors. Peter bounded up the steps and opened the door. Henry had just hopped off the couch—we could tell because the cushion was warm—and the TV was tuned to Univision.

  Henry had obviously gotten up on the sofa and rolled over onto the remote and accidentally turned up the volume and changed the channel (either that or, like most North American males, he secretly enjoyed Sábado Gigante). We still laugh about how he must have panicked and thought, “How do you turn this thing down?!”

  From then on, we pretty much let him get on any furniture he wanted, though he would always ask permission before he jumped up.

  After two years in San Diego, we scraped together enough for a down payment for a small house on a canyon in a neighborhood called South Park. It was a tiny place, but it had a big deck in the back and we spent a lot of time there. It was Henry’s favorite spot.

  One day he saw his first lizard on the one palm tree out back. He was a dog obsessed. He’d stand there all day waiting for it to reappear. Peter worked from home and would go out and move the umbrella every hour to keep him in the shade. I worried Henry would cook out there.

  Next to us was an open space where Peter and I would take Henry to exercise. We would throw rocks down into the canyon and he would scamper down to fetch them and then charge back up. He’d do this over and over until we decided he’d had enough.

  On September 11, 2001, Peter made my tea and woke me so that I could get ready for work. He took Henry over to that canyon around 5:40 a.m. (Yes, we’d made Henry a “morning dog.”) I got up and, still sleepy, turned on the television to watch the morning news. The first of the Twin Towers had already been attacked. As my eyes and ears adjusted to the news, I saw the second plane hit the second tower. I ran outside yelling for Peter to come back.

  “They’re attacking the World Trade Center with planes! Hurry!” I said. Like many, he thought I meant that a small plane had wandered off course and accidentally crashed into the building. If only that had been true.

  Reports of attacks in Washington, D.C., started coming into the stations. Some of them were false; others, unfortunately, were not. I prayed. I still had many friends in the nation’s capital.

  I sat all day with Henry watching the news. I sent an e-mail to a friend, Mindy Tucker, with whom I’d worked on the Hill and who was then the communications director for U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. They were under terrorist threat and pressure—to figure out how the attacks had been planned and carried out, and to prevent more from happening. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. She responded that she was.

  A couple of days later, Mindy asked if I would be willing to move back to Washington to work at the Justice Department. I said yes and started packing before we hung up the phone.

  I felt sad for Henry because San Diego was such a great place to be a dog (California is a great place to be anything, except a taxpayer). The weather, the dog beaches, the laid-back friendliness of the people there, many of whom loved dogs. But there was never a question of whether we’d return to D.C., especially after the terrorist attacks. And going back to join the Bush administration changed the trajectory of my career completely. Henry was contentedly along for the ride.

  I left for D.C. a couple of weeks later and Peter wrapped up our affairs in San Diego. He and Henry drove across the country, stopping to see friends along the way. Henry was a good travel companion, always there for company but not talking very much.

  As Vizslas age, their faces turn white. Like Henry’s here. Dogs get sweeter as they get older.

  Over the years, Henry lived in Scotland, California, Washington, D.C., and New York City. He traveled across the country and visited over thirty states. He was my dog while I worked in the White House, and even the president knew him. One of my fondest memories was Henry joining the press briefing in Kennebunkport, Maine, which we held at the Colony Hotel down the road from the Bushes’ family compound on Walker’s Point. Henry just laid down next to the podium while I bantered with the reporters. It was a White House Press Briefing First. Henry and I liked to make history. (I was actually hoping he’d have another historic first on one particular reporter’s shoes… you know who you are!)

  Henry even weighed in on politics. I taught him some political tricks; for example, Henry would bark when asked if Bill Clinton should be in jail (the trigger word was “jail,” so you could slot anyone’s name in there and the trick worked—it came in handy years later when the star NFL quarterback Michael Vick was found guilty of cruelty to animals).

  Henry could also play dead when asked about Al Gore’s “lock box.” I’d ask him, “So what do you think of Gore’s Social Security plan?” And I would raise my eyebrows, which was Henry’s signal to lie down. Anticipating a treat, Henry would often do the quickest of deaths. I wouldn’t let him up until he played “all the way dead.” It was great fun to show him off at parties (at least the ones with lots of Republicans in attendance and after a few cocktails).

  I served for seven and a half years in the Bush administration, and Henry was with us all the time. Whereas Peter knew how stressed I was, Henry had no idea. That meant that he didn’t give me a wide berth when I was on edge, as Peter would sometimes wisely do.

  Henry just loved me and wanted to play when I got home. Then he’d settle down and we’d have dinner. I used to give him about half of my plate. I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t have much of an appetite given that my mind was on work most of the time. In those years when I didn’t have much time for exercise, Henry helped me keep my weight down. He was like my personal Weight Watchers counselor.

  Henry hated to hear any curse words, especially the “F” word. He was sensitive to vulgarity and conflict. Once we had a friend with us on a drive out to Annapolis and she was telling us a really funny story; the thing is, she can talk like a sailor, which cracks me up, but it was upsetting Henry in the backseat. I had to stop her midtale and ask her to keep it PG. She laughed but complied with my request. As soon as she did, Henry perked right back up and seemed to enjoy her story as much as we did.

  He also didn’t like to be teased. He’d bark his head off at us if we said, “Henry, do you have fleas?” When we’d sing Henry Vizsla to the tune of “Hare Krishna” and clap our hands, he’d bark at us like, “Stop! I’ll never get that song out of my head!”

  Even before social media really took off, I was known around the office as being a dog lover. Peter complained that on my bulletin board in my office in the White House I had more pictures of Henry than of him—but I reminded him: Who takes most of the pictures? The answer: Peter!

  Henry was a truly regal dog.

  I was overboard with Henry, it’s true. And that became more than clear one day in Crawford, Texas.

  The press office was always on duty during the White House years, and when President Bush was working from his ranch, we would hold the daily press briefings at the middle school in Crawford.

  I was the deputy press secretary at this point, and I was on deck to do the briefing that day. I hadn’t briefed the press on camera very often, and I was really ner
vous. To prepare, I asked a young intern if she would pepper me with possible questions I’d written up that I might get asked in the briefing. As I drove, she prepared me.

  Along the way, I went off on a tangent and was telling her a story about something that had happened the week before when I was home.

  About halfway through my story she stopped me.

  “Wait a second. Henry is your dog? All this time, I thought Henry was your husband and that Peter was your dog!” she said.

  I almost had to pull over I was laughing so hard. I love both my husband and my dog, but I don’t think they’re interchangeable! (I just have to remind myself: Peter is the one that tells the jokes, and the dog is the one that sleeps next to me in bed…)

  While Henry never got to come to the White House to play with the president’s dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley, he was the talk of many meetings.

  President Bush and Vice President Cheney would ask me about Henry, and they got a kick out of Henry’s political tricks (especially when I’d ask Henry what he really thought of John Kerry and he’d go fetch one of my old flip-flops).

  So even back in the White House days, dogs helped me connect with my colleagues—we didn’t always have to talk about terror threats or tax reform some-times we just shot the breeze about our kids and our dogs.

  Henry loved ice cream. Once he was older, I let him have what he wanted.

  Peter Gets Arrested—Because of the Dog

  (AS TOLD BY PETER)

  IT’S ALL HENRY’S FAULT! My brush with the law started around 7:15 p.m. on November 15, 2007, when I took Henry to Lincoln Park. I parked across the road and was walking in the park with him; the park was deserted apart from a few other dog owners there, and we chatted about our dogs as the darkness settled around us.