The world’s richest (quadrupedal) rich bitch
Sep 3rd, 2007 by Paul Moor
From this morning’s New York Times, this much as a teaser:
Multimillionaire Dog Can’t Buy Herself a Friend
She has a thing for cream cheese and long walks in the park. Like many New Yorkers, she is well fed, well groomed and well medicated (for her thyroid and kidney troubles). At the age of 8, she has already been the star of a national advertising campaign and the subject of at least one messy lawsuit.
She has spent most of her days in pampered luxury, in a penthouse apartment at the top of the Park Lane Hotel, at the southern edge of Central Park. A hotel pianist once wrote a tune for her. A hotel chef cooked her meals, and a housekeeper served them, hand-feeding her steamed carrots and other vegetables with grilled chicken.
Life, in fact, got to be so good that some people had to watch what they said around her. They didn’t want to offend her — or her owner and best friend, Leona Helmsley — by calling her, of all things, a dog.
“Nobody could say ‘the dog,’ ” said Zamfira Sfara, 48, a former housekeeper for Mrs. Helmsley, who Ms. Sfara said preferred a more regal term for her beloved pet:
Princess.
But she is a canine — the richest, most talked about and most controversial dog in a city of dogs. Mrs. Helmsley, the hotel magnate who died last month at age 87, showed her enduring love for her dog, whose actual name is Trouble, by leaving the dog $12,000,000 in her will. Mrs. Helmsley was not as generous to her chauffeur, who was awarded $100,000, or to two of her grandchildren, who received nothing, the 14-page will states, “for reasons which are known to them. . . .”
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