PuppyGate is only getting more convoluted as this explosive season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills continues, with Teddi Mellencamp accusing Lisa Vanderpump of using her as a pawn to take down Dorit Kemsley.
Tuesday’s all-new episode of the Bravo show picked up the latest in the complicated issue of what happened after Kemsley adopted a dog from Lisa Vanderpump’s dog rescue, Vanderpump Dogs — her second after returning the first dog she adopted to the rescue center after it bit her daughter. The second dog, which Vanderpump Dogs director John Sessa claims was hand-raised for her, was also not a good fit for her home, so Kemsley gave the dog away to someone she thought would give her a better home. However, the pup ended up in a shelter, instead of back at Vanderpump Dogs as Kemsley had agreed, upon penalty of a contractual $5,000 fine.
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During the season premiere, Mellencamp revealed that friend John Blizzard, who works at Vanderpump Dogs, had told her about the situation with Kemsley’s dog, which was brought up by Sessa in front of Kyle Richards, resulting in the story making the rounds with the other Housewives. While Vanderpump publicly shut the dog talk down, Lisa Rinna accused Vanderpump of orchestrating her employees bringing up the issue to make Kemsley look bad.
When confronted by Richards, Vanderpump maintained she didn’t instruct Sessa to do anything, but the tension only ramped up when the SUR owner asked Mellencamp to talk ahead of their last night in Mexico.
“Am I here for an apology?” Mellencamp asked, to which Vanderpump replied, “I’d like an explanation.”
While Mellencamp insisted Vanderpump told Blizzard to tell her the gossip about Kemsley, the Housewives veteran denied it, so Mellencamp showed her a text exchange between herself and Blizzard.
“Didn’t Lisa want you to tell me?” she asked Blizzard, who replied back in all caps, “YES.”
It’s to be noted that the conversation was only shown cropped, so no one got to see the full conversation — a point that will come up later.
“This isn’t fair,” Mellencamp said to Kemsley. “I’m telling you the same thing I told you last night: You did nothing in regards to this situation.”
“You are much smarter than you lead on,” she added to Vanderpump on her way out. “You are not confused in this situation, and I’m not gonna be your pawn to get at [Kemsley].”
Kemsley was utterly lost at who to trust at that point.
“On the one hand, I have a friend that I trust that I have history with,” she told the camera. “On the other hand, I have someone that I’ve had my issues with, who’s coming in defense of me with such conviction. Who am I supposed to believe at this point?”
Meanwhile, Vanderpump’s husband, Ken Todd, decided to get to the bottom of the text conversation, asking Blizzard to print out his full conversation with Mellencamp.
In the messages, Mellencamp allegedly told Blizzard, “Have the dog there and I can say it looks like Dorit’s dog. Either way, it will come out.”
The issue may be even more complicated, however, as Mellencamp tweeted after last week’s episode, “I hope next week Ken doesn’t leave out the part in those messages that confirms Lisa set this up. Neat thing about texts is I can print them out as well.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
Photo credit: Bravo
