One Last Swim

Henry was an athletic dog but had a few health problems along the way. He used to dive underwater for big rocks, stay under while he hunted for the right one, and then bring it to the surface, his tail up and proud. Unfortunately, this led him to crack one of his molars and he had to have major dental surgery.

He also had several cysts that had to be removed over the years, and some of those had precancerous cells. But it was in his thirteenth year that he really started to fade. The diagnosis was Cushing’s disease.

There was really nothing more they could do.

Henry loved to swim. So much.
CREDIT: J. DAVID AKE

Vizslas go gray early, starting around five or six, and when I used to worry that Henry wasn’t well or that he was aging too quickly, Peter would point to his own head and say, “He looks just like me. Distinguished.” By the time Vizslas are ten, many of them have gone mostly white in the face, which makes me love them even more.

When I started work on The Five and we planned to move to New York, I fretted about Henry’s health. I knew that taking him out of his home and his neighborhood was going to be stressful.

Peter assured me he would be taking care of Henry and that I didn’t need to worry. They got to know everyone in the neighborhood—they’d stop and play Trivial Pursuit with the doormen in our building, get an ice cream from Scotty on Forty-Fourth Street, and have a chat with the guy that sold vintage comic books on the corner. It seemed like everyone in Midtown knew Mr. Henry.

Henry was an early fan of The Five.

Sadly, I was right about the move being hardest for our dog. The city was loud and chaotic. There was no grass or trees in our area. Henry had to ride in an elevator just to go outside to do his business on noisy Forty-Second Street. (Henry relieving himself on the busiest block in the center of the Western world is a metaphor for something… I’m just not sure what.)

Henry’s world was upended and his health started to fail just as my new career was taking off. I wanted to enjoy that new job fully, but my mind was often on the dog I’d loved for so long.

It’s been a few years since that time, and yet I still have difficulty telling this story without crying. And I know that my fellow dog owners will understand exactly how I feel.

With every dog story, there’s a joyful beginning, a wonderful, charming middle, and a tearful end.

Here’s what happened. I knew Henry was not doing well and didn’t think he’d live through the summer. It was March 2012, and the weather was starting to show some signs of a thaw. I wanted to take Henry to his favorite place—the beach. We finally found a dog-friendly beach online and planned to go that weekend.

Traffic in the city is always terrible, and I’m a nervous passenger. I was worried sick about Henry and my energy was spent from a long week of work where we’d argued about the presidential election on every show. When a driver cut us off, I snapped at Peter and he snapped back at me, and Henry shrank back into the seat. Then I felt even worse. We just needed to get to the beach. We drove in silence.

When we got there, the beach was a long distance from the parking lot. And there were big signs saying, DOGS MUST BE LEASHED AT ALL TIMES. Some dog beach that was.

Henry struggled on the soft sand on the way there, so we took it easy. The wind was strong. When we finally got to the beach, Henry smelled the salt air and he got a little pep in his step. I took off his leash. There weren’t many people around and I couldn’t imagine anyone would hassle us for letting our geriatric dog have one last romp in the waves. He even trotted a bit into the water.

Peter and I met eyes. We were both crying, but this time not because he was so cute, but because we knew he was going to leave us soon.

“See how happy he is,” Peter said.

It was so windy we couldn’t carry on a conversation. But I felt the fresh air was doing us all some good. When we started the long walk back up the beach, Henry faltered and his front legs buckled. I yelped. Peter scrambled in the sand to help him up.

Henry couldn’t walk, so Peter picked up our seventy-five-pound dog and carried him for a while. Eventually, Peter set him back down on the sand, and Henry was able to walk very slowly back to the car.

Peter and I were barely speaking—no longer because of our anger from earlier in the day, but out of fear and worry.

On the ride home, I held Henry’s chin in my hand and we agreed—something was very wrong.

We had painkillers for Henry and we gave him one. (I considered taking one myself.) By the time we got back to the apartment, Henry still seemed to be in pain, so we gave him another pill. But that just made him seem drunk. Henry wasn’t at all himself.

A few hours later with no improvement, Peter decided he had to take him to the emergency vet on Fifty-Fifth Street. He hurried to get dressed for the winter night, and I kissed Henry on the head and told Peter to hurry.

I didn’t go with him. And that’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

Because Henry never came home.

The next morning, we hoped to go pick him up. But the call we got was that we needed to get to the hospital immediately. Henry was fading.

The taxi driver must have thought the world was ending. In many ways, ours was. We managed to tell him where we needed to go.

English wasn’t our driver’s first language, and usually Peter talks to taxi drivers and often he’s been to their home countries. We felt terrible that we seemed so rude since we were so distraught. When he pulled up to the curb outside of the Blue Pearl Animal Hospital, he turned to us and kindly said, “I am so sorry.” I wish I could have hugged him, but we were running out of time.

When we got there, we were ushered downstairs into the ICU-type room. There were lots of other pets there—including a rabbit, and I remember thinking, “Who has a rabbit in NYC?” (My friend later told me the answer: French chefs.)

Henry was on the floor hooked up to an oxygen machine. I got on my knees and kissed his face and thanked him for being such a good dog. Peter could barely manage to do the same.

I stood and remembered what my grandfather, who had such a soft spot for animals, told me on the ranch. “Never ever let an animal suffer.”

“Doctor, we’re okay. We’re ready,” I said.

I led Peter out of the unit and into the private room where the vet explained he would bring Henry in and administer the shot. Those moments were unbearable. Through tears I e-mailed my mom and my sister, who were in shock in Denver. They didn’t know Henry was so ill.

My grief was compounded by watching Peter. My husband was collapsing inside. His face was nearly unrecognizable, and I never want to see that again.

A few moments later the doctor came in, but Henry wasn’t with him.

“As soon as you left the room, Henry passed away. It’s as if he was waiting for your permission to go,” the doctor said.

We sobbed.

Oh, Henry. I believe he stayed alive long enough for us to say good-bye.

What a gentleman… No, what a dog.

We slowly walked back to the apartment. It was a really cold day. As we approached the building, the doorman and building staff were there, expecting news on Henry. All we could do was shrug and look up, our faces wet with tears.

“Oh no. We’re so sorry, you guys,” the doorman said, and a couple of the building staff started crying with us.

We thanked them and went up the dreaded forty-six floors to the apartment.

When the door shut, our grief took hold. I’m talking full-on meltdown for the entire day. It was March 25, 2012.

As the night wore on, I put away the sneakers I’d worn to the beach with Henry the day before. They still had sand in them. They still do, in fact. I keep them in the back of my closet. I can’t bear to throw them away.

Peter managed to get a note written that he sent to our friends and family, and we got lots of calls and messages because they knew how much Henry meant to us.

Still, neither of us stopped crying for hours… days… I wasn’t able to get ahold of myself.

It wasn’t until writing this that I could look back and thought about why.

When I first picked up Henry in Scotland, I was twenty-six years old and had just made a major life decision to leave the United States and my great job on Capitol Hill to move to England to be with the man I fell in love with on a plane.

My head was a bit in the clouds—I was fairly carefree but becoming a woman. I didn’t have much responsibility, and I spent my days learning about the UK and reading novels for hours at a time.

Two months later, I got married at the justice of the peace in England and honeymooned in Santorini. I immediately felt different about my relationship with Peter—he went from being my serious boyfriend to being my family.

And Henry gave us such joy. I was in love and loved. It was a happy, easy time.

Over the next fourteen years, my life would change in many ways.

We moved to San Diego where I tried to fit into the public relations culture there, but that career track didn’t stick. I missed Washington, and after 9/11 I had the opportunity to return and work for the Bush administration at the Department of Justice.

Soon after I started at Justice, I got pulled over to the White House, where I would meet another man that eventually would change my life forever: President George W. Bush, who eventually chose me as his press secretary.

My seven years of service in the administration took a physical and emotional toll on me, mostly because of the hours and the intensity of the stress of the work.

Of course, becoming the White House press secretary was the best thing that ever happened to my career. I learned so much—about policy, world affairs, management, and politics.

But the most important lesson I learned working for President Bush was about character and how to conduct myself under stress and attack. I found out how to be productive despite obstacles, and appreciated how a communicator can help calm a situation, advance a negotiation, or lead to a solution.

The press secretary is the pinnacle for a public relations professional—it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

But having worked in politics for so many years, I’d built up a fairly tough exterior. The daily battles can wear a person out, and in some ways, I became edgier and harder than I’d ever been.

It was also a lofty position, and the surest way you can lose your way in Washington, D.C., is to let any of that power or prestige go to your head.

Throughout those years, Henry kept me from losing sight of what was important in life: appreciation and gratitude for my health and blessings, and the love I shared with Peter and our dog.

We were a unit—the three of us stuck together. We knew each other better than anyone else in the world. As Harry Truman once said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” And as Charles Krauthammer suggests, get two—in case the first one turns on you.

What I learned at the White House served me well when I went on and transitioned from being the spokesperson for the Leader of the Free World to speaking for myself. I’d never said in public what my personal opinions were before I joined Fox News as a contributor—and while it is somewhat freeing to do so, it is a bit like walking on a high wire without a net. And it doesn’t come without a price. The criticism from an increasingly unhinged social media network can be withering, and it takes a thick skin, a strong stomach, and a humble sense of humor to manage it.

And through it all, there were Peter and Henry.

While Peter mostly understood what I was going through, Henry had no idea.

He didn’t know that I’d yelled at a reporter or was sick to my stomach thinking about an article that I knew would hit the next morning.

He didn’t know that I was juggling too many balls and constantly lived in worry that I was going to drop one and that the consequences would be severe.

When I would lie awake at night thinking through all the things I could have said or should have done, he’d lie next to our bed and snore lightly—which wasn’t annoying; it actually made me smile. In contrast, if Peter snored, he got pushed to roll over.

Henry didn’t care that I got to dine in the State Dining Room with heads of state, celebrities, and some of the most interesting and accomplished people in the world.

He didn’t know about my sharp tongue and my occasional atomic elbow that I used to help get me through the job.

Henry knew me just as his mom. He made me look forward to getting picked up after work, because he’d be sitting on the backseat and he’d put his chin on my shoulder as we rode home.

Peter would ask me, “How was your day?” but I wouldn’t be ready to relive it yet, so I’d say, “Can I hear about your and Henry’s day first?”

And then Peter would tell me all about what Henry had done, because he knew that was what I most wanted to hear.

Henry made me get outside for fresh air, to take walks through our Capitol Hill neighborhood; we’d stroll to the coffee shop where they’d give him a biscuit and go to Frager’s hardware store to have a look around the garden shop.

He kept me grounded in the heady life I had at the White House and in New York City working in television.

Henry was a witness to my transition from the young woman of twenty-six to the more confident woman of nearly forty. So much in my life had changed in those fourteen years, but Henry was the constant for Peter and me. I didn’t know who I would have been without him.

Henry’s final autumn. Peter took this picture in Annapolis, right before we moved to New York City. We were excited by the new opportunity but worried about the toll it would take on Henry.

Around 10 p.m. the night Henry died, my phone rang. I couldn’t imagine who was calling so late and worried it was more bad news.

But it was our friend and fellow dog lover, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News.

“Dana, I know the last thing you think you should do right now is get another puppy, but I’m telling you it’s the best way to heal your heart,” Greta said.

Greta has a contagious confidence. She really makes you feel like you can do something—and she has strong opinions and very good advice.

I told her all the reasons I thought I couldn’t get another dog while living in New York City, but she insisted we think about it.

I told Peter about the call, but he said we couldn’t replace Henry.

Two nights later, at a diner we went to because the apartment was too silent, we looked at each other and said, “We can do this.”

Greta was right.

So that night, finally showing some signs of life after the death of Henry, we fell in love with our new puppy that we’d never even met.

We even named him: Jasper.