If Teddi Mellencamp could turn back time, PuppyGate may have had a different ending — if it even happened at all.
“I wish I would have said that from the very first phone call, ‘This doesn’t involve me,’” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star tells Us Weekly exclusively, referring to her phone call with Vanderpump Dogs employee John Blizzard. “I don’t care if Lisa [Vanderpump] wanted you to tell me, I don’t want to know. … I wish I would’ve done it.”
According to Teddi, Vanderpump encouraged her employees to tell the accountability coach that Lucy, the dog Dorit Kemsley adopted from Vanderpump Dogs, ended up at a kill shelter, so it could be a storyline on the show. Teddi, 37, and Vanderpump, 58, went head to head during the Tuesday, March 5, episode of the Bravo series about Teddi’s role in the women finding out about Dorit’s dog drama.
“The truth is, before we started the season, John Blizzard from Vanderpump Dogs called me and said, ‘Lisa wanted you to know the story about the dog,’” Teddi tells Us. “And I was told a very dramatic story. I had a very dramatic response.”
“I am involved in all the petty drama that ensues all at Lisa Vanderpump’s instruction, and then you’re now seeing a portion of the texts printed out,” she continues, referring to Vanderpump’s husband, Ken Todd, revealing alleged text messages between Teddi and John about bringing up Lucy on camera.
While Teddi admits to Us that she “made a mistake” by getting involved, she insists that “every single part of it was because I was told the information.”
“I’m not clean in everything,” she says. “I have to live with that, to apologize for it. And I feel silly that I even went down that road. … I’m not justifying my behavior, but in my mind I was thinking, ‘OK, I’m a newer housewife, Lisa’s reaching out … They’re reaching out to me for Lisa.’”
Vanderpump, meanwhile, insisted during Tuesday night’s episode that she did not set Teddi up or tell any of her employees to speak about Dorit’s dog on the series.
“Why would my friends think that I’m out to get Dorit?” Vanderpump said during the episode. “I don’t know why I’m getting the blame, I’m not the one who brought it out in the dog center. I have gone out of my way not to talk about it publicly. Oh, and now Dorit has sided with everybody’s else. Dorit’s actually got it wrong. My priority was always the dog, end of story. And now I don’t have any idea how to sort out this whole bloody mess.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs on Bravo Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
