The list of New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer’s accomplishments is endless: She’s a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, the author of the best-selling book Dark Money, and one of the best investigative reporters of our time. She’s also, apparently, a very loving pet owner who won’t let anyone — especially an ex-boyfriend and a Fox News host — get in between her and her dog.
In a new profile in Elle, Mayer delves into countless inspiring stories about her impressive decades-long career as a journalist, including what it was like to be The Wall Street Journal’s first female White House correspondent, as well as how she came to break multiple stories about the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And then, she relays one rather more relatable story: that she once went to great lengths to steal back her dog from a horrible ex. In the early ’90s, Mayer was in a relationship and living with an unnamed lawyer — or she was, until she returned home from a reporting trip and discovered that he had started to see Laura Ingraham, who would go on to host a show on Fox News and lose 20-plus advertisers after mocking a Parkland shooting survivor. To use Mayer’s own words, Ingraham was her “polar opposite.”
But what upset Mayer the most was not the dissolution of the relationship, or even the obvious duplicity of her former partner — it was that Ingraham and her ex refused to give Mayer back her dog, Peaches.
Mayer, a tenacious journalist, wouldn’t take no for an answer — especially when her dog was involved. So, on a day that the couple wasn’t home, with the help of former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, Mayer crawled through the dog door to rescue Peaches. As Mayer tweeted with a screenshot of the anecdote, “It’s great to get a story, but it’s ESSENTIAL to get your dog.”
Give this anecdote a Pulitzer.