KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN (80 page)

You heard right. Shoka was now blogging and telling us how much he is loved and cherished by Kate, and how he is such a big part of the Gosselin family. The “family” angle is still sad and telling because Nala was also part of the Gosselin family, and she was permanently banished…like all of Kate’s human family: her parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles. All banished.

Shoka made sure to tell us that those horrible rumors about Kate not loving him and even abusing him were all just a terrible pack of lies. Surely Shoka the dog wouldn’t lie, now would he? I’ve spent a lot of quality one-on-one time with him, and he seems like a pretty straight-shooter.

But Kate needed to assure everyone that she really, really loves Shoka and she takes absolutely amazing care of him. You don’t have to take Kate’s word for it. You can hear it directly from Shoka’s mouth.

Kate posted a blog - which she, no doubt, thought was clever and cute - about Shoka getting into and eating loaves of bread that she said she had baked herself and had wrapped in plastic for the trash men as a Christmas present:

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Kate got herself in even more trouble when she tweeted this:

worried? He's in the dog house tonight. Ate baked goods for trash men... Plastic and all!!! Bad dog!

Within hours, the anti-Kate blogs were up in arms about Kate’s carelessness in leaving dangerous plastic-wrapped items where Shoka could get his paws on them and swallow them. Dog owners and pet lovers lambasted her for being so cavalier about Shoka eating the plastic wrap, which could have caused choking or serious intestinal damage. That thought, of course, would never have occurred to Kate Gosselin because she doesn’t have the slightest clue about how to properly care for anything, especially a dog.

Kate was so panicked by the outcry over her latest blunder that she,
I mean, Shoka, was forced to write another blog within days to tell everyone that he was fine and there was nothing to worry about. So on December 21, 2011, Shoka blogged that “NO WAY” did he eat any wrappers; this despite the fact that “he” had blogged that he had “eaten some doggone plastic wrap” and Kate had tweeted that he had eaten “Plastic and all!!!”

Kate is also guilty of leaving Shoka outside in the cold and rain all night, most times as a “punishment” for his misbehaving, or acting like a dog. She leaves him alone in the dark, howling to come inside. I’ve heard it, and I’ve heard about it. And so has Kate. In fact, she was hearing so much criticism about it that Shoka wrote two blogs on this topic – just a few months apart. It’s a regular thing with Kate, letting us know that Shoka really, really loves being locked out of the house alone on cold, dark, rainy nights.

No matter how many blogs Kate writes pretending to be Shoka, and how many lies she puts into Shoka’s mouth about how really happy he is, the fact is that Kate Gosselin simply does not care enough about Shoka to take proper care of him.

Here is just one more of the many examples of this. On Easter Sunday, 2012 – four months after Kate blogged about dogs choking on certain toys and plastic bread wrappers – Shoka was allowed to run free with “1,400” filled, plastic Easter eggs laying all over her property. He ate as many sharp, plastic eggs as he could, while Kate was in the house drinking wine. (She tweeted the photo of the wine telling everyone what she was doing.)

At one point, Shoka was even eating the plastic eggs directly out of the garbage bag being used to carry them by a stranger who was placing them around the yard for the kids. Shoka’s entire head was in the plastic bag eating the plastic Easter eggs, and Kate never once set foot outside to check on him. It’s a miracle poor Shoka is still alive.

On July 8, 2012, in her never-ending need to tweet everything, Kate gave us a hint as to her relationship with Shoka. A young fan tweeted Kate about Shoka and said, “have fun when he comes to give you his big ole good night kiss!!” Kate proudly announced this in reply:

he knows he’s not allowed to give me any kisses ever so no worries there! Lol

Sadly, Shoka is never allowed to give Kate a kiss, and yet she would have us believe that he’s the most loved dog ever and a huge part of her family. What’s even sadder is that I have never seen Kate kiss any of her children either, not in person and not in any of the thousands of family photos I found.

“They’re all sort of bald and fattish, aren’t they?

They have a look.”

– Kate Gosselin

I had my first up-close and personal meeting with the Gosselin kids in the summer of 2009, on their turf, in their driveway up by the garage as they were playing outside. Here are my
US Weekly
notes about that first meeting:

5 pm - Jon had seen a dirt bike along the highway for sale and he asked me yesterday if I could stop by on my way home and check it out. I did and after a visit and a few phone calls, I successfully purchased it for Jon and had the guy bring it to the house. I didn’t mention Jon’s name until we got to the property and he seemed pretty happy to meet Jon and he watches the show all the time. They had a mutual friend or two in common and Jon invited him to ride sometime at the property.

Jon brought the bike over behind the white minivan that’s always sitting in front of the garage so the paparazzi couldn’t see it but he let one guy (me) photograph the purchase.

The kids were all over me up there asking excitedly “are you a paparazzi?” I told them I was a good guy, and they were just so friendly and talking to me and asking me questions. They loved the dirt bike and one of the little girls said, “Daddy always gets cool things!”

This is what I observed about the kids interacting with the paps:

Jon & Kate Gosselin PA Reporting

April 2010

Despite what Kate says to the contrary, and despite her efforts to make the kids afraid of the paparazzi, the kids love them. It’s pretty much the same people every day and Jon says that since they grew up with cameras in their faces, it’s a natural part of their lives. I play with the kids all the time and they love it. They know us as their daddy’s friends and they feel at ease around us. It’s sad that Kate scares them and yells at them to the point that when she’s with them and they see us nearby, they’re afraid to even look in our direction. Collin is such a sweet little boy and he smiled and waved to one of the paps in the parking lot at the bus stop a few weeks back and that turned into the infamous photo of Kate slapping him and covering his mouth. She’s a horrible mother.

These are some more of my notes. Reading all this now, years later, I feel like a total idiot. But at the time, I was desperately trying to be the best reporter I could be, so I could keep my job and feed my own children. Some of the stories are hilarious, though, even to me. We did manage to have some fun while working.

Jon and Kate Gosselin PA Reporting

November 2009

Got to the Gosselin house this morning at 8 am. There was a gold car sitting in the driveway (Kate’s chef preparing her meals) along with Kate’s Land Cruiser and the Sprinter van.

Kate went out at 10:05 in the Land Cruiser followed by me and the paps. She took a different route today and ended up at Performance Toyota. She pulled all the way around the back out of sight. The paps stayed away because they said they’d been thrown off the lot before. I drove to the back and as I was going around behind the building, I almost drove into Kate sitting in the car and two employees who were standing in front of her door talking to her. She quickly pointed me out and they told me to get off the lot. I went off the lot and next door to a gas station and parked in the back and climbed a hill and could watch her from the tree line. I called a pap over to take pictures as well. She was allowed to wait in a new car in the back of the
lot while her car was taken inside for work/service. She unloaded a box and some other personal belongings out of the Land Cruiser and into the car. She sat in the passenger seat of a silver Toyota making calls on her cell for an hour.  When her car was finished, they pulled it out and drove it over right behind the car she was in and she got out and jumped in after talking to an employee for a few minutes.

After the Toyota dealership, she drove to a different Dunkin Donuts and went through the drive thru, getting a large coffee of some kind. I couldn’t hear the order. The pap was behind her taking pictures.

From there she headed to the UPS store and like she usually does, she parked on the wrong side facing the wrong direction right underneath a sign that reads ‘No Parking Fire Lane’. Must be nice being Kate Gosselin. After five minutes inside she came out with her mail and was greeted by the pap right in her face videotaping her and asking her questions. Today’s questions were about Jon’s televised apology last night, her speeding ticket, how she spent Halloween and who she liked in the World Series. Her responses were blank stare, blank stare, blank stare and blank stare. Her usual. She has never uttered a syllable to the paps with video cameras.

After UPS she drove to her bank branch in Shillington, PA. She was inside for forty-five minutes. We waited by her car in the lot out front. While I was standing there I couldn’t help but notice some of the things she had on her front seat. She was leaving town today and I guess she doesn’t like leaving them at home. She had a box with files in it and four big binders. The labels on the binders were: LHOTP, LLC, JKIG, Inc., K8,INC., BC/BS. This is all of her personal and financial information. After coming out of the bank and getting in her car, she sat for a few minutes and got out and went inside again for another twenty minutes. I had already jumped in my car getting ready for the next phase of the chase so I didn’t see if she was going through papers etc. She stayed inside the bank for an additional twenty minutes.

After the bank she got on the highway at high speed and got off in West Reading where she stopped by the dry cleaners. She went to the drive-thru and picked up several shirt bags.

The FedEx/Kinkos store was next. She parked in a parking space this time and went inside. She took in four or five large envelopes from her box on the front seat. She got there at 1:11 pm and literally stayed inside for over an hour, coming out at 2:27 pm. We can’t go in or see what’s happening inside because she hides behind large signs that the employees move into place to block our view. I could see her making a lot of copies and filling out FedEx mailing labels.

Four high school girls were at Starbucks next door and saw her go inside and were waiting for forty-five minutes for her to come out but they finally gave up. I asked what they would say to her and they just wanted to take a photo with her on their cell phones. (Wyomissing school district had a half day today.)

I was parked right next to her while she was inside and when she came out, the paps were right in her face again and she looked very annoyed but kept her composure as usual. She’s unflappable. When she got back in her car she leaned over towards the passenger side to put things back in the box and looked at me through the window. I smiled and waved and she rolled her eyes and looked away. That’s as much of a reaction as you’ll get from Kate.

She left the FedEx lot and sped back up State Hill Road toward home. The speed limit is 40 mph and she was going 55 mph approaching the blind hill at the State Hill boat launch parking lot. A pickup pulling a boat pulled out in front of her crossing her lane and she barely avoided hitting him. She swerved to the right and just got around him and kept going. I was following – not chasing. She drives erratically all the time. It’s going to end badly one of these days. I hope I’m not there when it happens.

On the winding country road leading to her house, she drives into the other lane going around S turns. Very dangerous.

Kate got back to the house at 2:45 pm. The gold car was gone by now. Just the Sprinter van was there. I was the only one at the house and it was dead quiet and I could hear Kate yelling when she got inside the house. From the street to the house is a football field away and I could hear her all the way down at my car. I originally thought she was just venting from spending the past four and a half hours being followed and grilled by the paps, but I later learned that she was yelling at Jon when he told her that he would be late getting home. She would now have to go pick up the kids at the bus instead of him.

I waited in my car out in front of the house. No police came by to chase me this time. Kate went out again in the Land Cruiser instead of the big blue Sprinter van at 3:30 pm. This was odd because there were no nannies there and Jon wasn’t home and the
bus drop off is at 4 pm, fifteen minutes from her house. I followed her and she went back to the FedEx store of all places. I called the paps who were waiting at the bus stop and they came and took even more shots of her coming out. She was inside from 3:40 to 3:55 making more copies and she came out with something that looked like a large calendar folded over. It was on heavy paper and looked glossy but I couldn’t see what it was. Kate could be heard saying “Goodbye, thank you!” coming out of FedEx.