Bush’s service dog, Sully, lies by casket before last journey

The yellow Labrador retriever appeared woebegone, his head slack over his front left paw, his muzzle resting on the ground. Yet he was also steadfast, still keeping watch over George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, who died on Friday at his home in Houston.

After accompanying the statesman and World War II veteran in the final months of his life, Sully, the late president’s service dog, lay before the casket holding what remained of him.

The display of instinctual, animalistic devotion captured the reaction to Bush’s death in a way that the words spilled all weekend over the internet could not. Dogs, wrote the poet Emily Dickinson, “know but do not tell.”

In his knowing pose, the dog was at rest. He accompanied his person a final time, as Bush’s body was flown from Houston to Washington on Monday. “Mission complete,” Jim McGrath, the Bush spokesman who shared a photo of the service dog’s mournful stance Sunday, wrote on Twitter.

The moving image also appeared on the Facebook page of America’s VetDogs, a service dog program that assists veterans, active-duty service members and first responders struggling with disabilities. The Labrador was raised by VetDogs.

Sully was matched to Bush in June of this year, at the age of 2. He is named after former airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who safely landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009.

While his presidential mission is complete, Sully’s work isn’t done. America’s VetDogs said the Labrador would join the Walter Reed General Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he would assist with “physical and occupational therapy to wounded soldiers and active duty personnel during their journey to recovery.”

That Sully would continue to serve veterans was a source of comfort for the Bush family. The late president’s son and the 43rd president, George W. Bush, predicted that the dog would bring “joy” to patients at Walter Reed. Jeb Bush, the president’s younger son, also weighed in.

“Sully has the watch,” he wrote on Twitter.

EVAN SISLEY/OFFICE OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH Sully, former President George H.W. Bush’s service dog, lies in front of his casket in Houston on Sunday. The 41st president died Friday.