West Virginia Is Buzzing About 'Babydog'

The English bulldog had never featured prominently in West Virginia history. It has now. Gov. Jim Justice’s 4-year-old pure breed Babydog joined the ranks of Abraham Lincoln, Civil War soldiers, and odes to Appalachian folk music in new murals under the golden dome of the state Capitol last week, alongside other state cultural symbols. Tucked into a mural about artistic traditions, the AP reports the dog sits placidly between a banjo player and an artist painting the Seneca Rocks, one of the state’s best-known natural landmarks, in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.

Babydog made another memorable appearance at the Capitol in 2022, when the governor hoisted her up during his State of the State address and pointed her rear end at the camera. Days earlier, singer and actress Bette Midler, on what was then Twitter, had called West Virginians “poor, illiterate and strung out” after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin refused to support a bill promoted by President Biden and Democrats in Congress. “Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there: Kiss her heinie,” Justice said to a standing ovation.

Justice, a Republican now running to succeed Manchin, has made Babydog a minor celebrity in West Virginia during his two terms as governor. The star of the governor’s “Do it for Babydog” COVID-19 vaccination campaign, the dog was a gift from Justice’s children in 2019. Referring to her lovingly as a “60-pound brown watermelon,” Justice has taken the dog on gubernatorial trips across the state ever since. So far, Justice has been playing innocent about Babydog’s appearance in the murals, which were commissioned as part of an effort to finish work inside the Capitol that stopped during the Great Depression. “I was just as surprised, in my ways, as anyone,” he said Wednesday.

Justice said a committee led by Randall Reid-Smith, secretary of the Department of Arts, Culture and History, made the call. The tiny image of the dog was not included in initial designs shared with the public, nor was it mentioned at the dedication, which Babydog did attend. It was not until afterward that people started noticing the bulldog in shots of the murals shared on social media. And there was not much debate about whose dog it was. Reid-Smith said at a news briefing this past week that he had been working for years to get a governor to invest in completing the nearly 100-year-old vision and that Justice was the one who finally made it happen. So far almost $350,000 in state money has been paid to Connecticut-based installers John Canning & Co. for the first four murals, with four more scheduled to be installed this fall. (Read more on the dog here.)