On October 23, 2023, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota received an urgent text from his wife, Gwen. It wasn’t about her. Or their daughter, Hope. Or their son, Gus.
It was about their dog.
“Scout locked himself in our bedroom somehow,” she wrote. “There is no key.”
The governor reacted with a question mark. Then, he screenshotted their conversation and posted it to X. “This damn dog,” he tweeted.
In 2017, Tim Walz made Gus a promise. If he won the election for Minnesota governor the following year, the family could get a dog. A high-wire and stressful campaign season unfolded over the next several months. But despite the craziness, his son didn’t forget. (He wasn’t the type: Several years before, he delivered a detailed PowerPoint presentation on why they should get a cat. “To be honest, the fight for the cat was one of Gus’s premier projects,” Walz told reporters at the time. “Sold my wife.”)
Walz won the election in November 2018 with 53.8% of the vote. His children congratulated their father…and then came to collect their prize.
Nine months after his January inauguration, Walz scheduled a press conference. The reason? “After months of searching, planning, and dodging questions, the Governor is prepared to make good on a promise he made to his most demanding constituents: his kids,” read the statement. On Thursday, September 5, at 4 p.m., he introduced Minnesotans to their First Puppy: a three-month-old Labrador retriever mix named Scout.
Before Scout was the First Dog of Minnesota, he was Gene, an abandoned rescue. At 11 weeks old, someone left him and his nine littermates on the side of a rural road in Oklahoma. Many had crawled down and gotten stuck in a ravine right before a rainstorm. A woman named Kathy discovered them. With the help of her son, she coaxed them all out before the area flooded. They knew if they didn’t get them all out now, they never would.
The litter was taken in by the Minnesota-based nonprofit Midwest Animal Rescue and Services. One by one, they gave each one a temporary name. One male in particular—described by MARS to Vogue as “very calm, slightly nervous, and well behaved”—was called Gene.
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They posted an adoption listing for Gene online. Within several days, MARS had an application from the Walz family. They rechristened him as Scout. “I’m proud that Minnesota’s First Dog is a rescue dog, and I hope Scout—who has been a very good boy—serves as a reminder for Minnesotans that there are a lot of pups waiting to be adopted,” the governor said at the time.
Scout settled in well to the Governor’s Mansion in St. Paul. He played frisbee in the backyard with the governor. He drove with his family to Dairy Queen for Pup Cups. He frequently snuck cat food from the bowls of his feline sibling Afton, and later Honey. Oh, and he ate his dad’s glasses before a COVID-19 press briefing. (The Walz family tells Vogue that if Scout had a motto, it would be: “If I can reach it, I can eat it.”)
In 2023, the Minnesota Governor’s Residence needed repairs. So the Walzes leased Eastcliff, the official residence of the president of the University of Minnesota. That’s where Scout really got into trouble. He had no problem opening doors at his old house. But when trying to get out of the bedroom at his new one, he accidentally turned a lock and trapped himself inside. (Or at least that’s the theory: “We still don’t know how he did it,” the family says.) As the Walzes panicked about how to get him out, Scout snoozed away soundly on the bed, only waking after workers climbed a ladder and broke through an open window.
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A year later, the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate. As soon as the announcement broke, Matt Nelson, the man behind the wildly popular Instagram account WeRateDogs, said he was flooded with notifications about Scout. “I believe we were tagged in [or] sent this tweet no less than 200 times in the minutes after it was posted,” he says. So he reposted it on his account—and it quickly went viral among his four million-plus followers.
Nelson wasn’t surprised. Walz, a former school teacher and high school football coach, felt relatable and familiar to many Americans. His tweets about Scout only furthered that perception: “It is simply a guy having a very human, normal reaction to something their dog did. For most of my audience, they can see their dog doing what Scout did and they can see themselves saying ‘this damn dog’ in response,” he says. But Nelson also believes it showcases something else: his character. “He’s a rescue,” he notes. “I’ve been in this dog internet space for nearly a decade, and I can say that there are few better subtle indicators of character than choosing to adopt an animal in need of a home.”
But even if Scout is technically a rescue, the Walzes do want to make something clear: “He rescued us as much as we rescued him,” they say.
Below, the Walz family and Scout answer Vogue’s Dogue questionnaire.
Walz Family
Vogue: What is your dog’s best quality?
He’s a gentle giant, but he’s just a big softie.
Who would voice your dog in a movie?
Tom Hanks. Totally Tom Hanks.
What is your dog’s weirdest nickname, and how did you come up with it?
He pretty much goes by Scout or Scoutie.
Where is the strangest place you’ve taken your dog?
Well, don’t know if this counts but he got himself on the Today show for locking himself in a bedroom. We had to go through the window and rescue him. We still don’t know how he did it.
If you could tell your dog one thing, what would it be?
That he rescued us as much as we rescued him.
What is the most human thing your dog does? What is the most dog thing your dog does?
Just like the rest of the family, he loves a summer drive to get ice cream from our local DQ. And he can’t stand when Honey the cat is getting more attention than he is.
Scout
Vogue: What is your full name?
Scout Walz
Astrological sign?
Gemini
Favorite toy?
Frisbee—especially when Tim wants to throw it for me.
Favorite meal?
Anything with peanut butter on it.
Worst habit?
Stealing my sister Honey’s cat food.
Strangest habit?
Stealing and eating Tim’s glasses.
If you could talk, what would your catchphrase be?
If I can reach it, I can eat it.
What is your human’s worst habit?
The guy loves Diet Mountain Dew.
