Lisa Vanderpump, 58, has been very open and honest with her fans about enduring an extremely rough year. She lost her brother Mark, 59, in April 2018, followed by a lot of unnecessary drama on a show she helped build from the ground up, The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. Then, she suffered from the death of her mother, Jean, 84, in June 2019. But rather than sit around, Lisa’s choosing to stay busy and positive and focus on doing good in the world after dealing with so much personal hardship. “I want to focus on the positivity and the things going on in my life that are going well,” Lisa Vanderpump told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY at her Vanderpump Dogs Foundation headquarters in Los Angeles. “I’ve still got 400 people that work for me and a 5013C, a restaurant development, Vegas – There’s a lot of stuff that I’m doing on a day to day basis, but this (Vanderpump Dog Foundation) is very important to me, this place to see it thrive, to see it doing well –.”
And the work that they are doing is no joke. The puppy palace, as LVP dubs it, is fully run by Lisa and her team, which includes some Vanderpump-friendly faces, Dr. John Sessa and John Blizzard. They rescue dogs from unimaginable conditions, get them vaccinated, spayed and neutered, fed and cleaned up with the goal to get them adopted out ASAP. People can come into the store, where 100% of the proceeds go straight to the foundation, or apply online. No matter what though, everyone is properly vetted! “I’m really proud to say that my team – And it’s been a lot of work setting this place up – We’ve adopted out over 1100 dogs now and they’ve found pretty much wonderful homes and loving environments,” Lisa said. “There’s a lot of help that’s needed all over the world. Obviously most of the stuff we do is domestic here and we do have a sanctuary in China which we’ve got probably about 600 dogs there. John [Sessa] goes regularly to China and we’ve been fighting the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, but right now we just got in 2 dogs from Puerto Rico but I think that the problem goes on. We basically got a couple of dogs from Puerto Rico to draw attention to what’s going on over there.”
Even with all of this going on to distract her, Lisa admits that it will be tough to not be adding The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills filming schedule into her day-to-day life when the show begins filming again later this year. “Of course,” Lisa said when asked if she was feeling sad about her decision not to return. “I was instrumental in the show right from the beginning. I’m not saying there’s regrets. I think it was impossible for me to stay. To me, when I started that journey, it was a pleasure and it was supposed to be fun, it was documenting our lives, and suddenly to be involved in a situation where six people are against you. I’ve found with the whole Housewives stuff, they lost the plot. The whole thing was about the dog. Suddenly they turn it into this kind of negative conversation. It was about the dog and that’s what it always should’ve been about.”
We sure will miss seeing LVP as a housewife, but with Vanderpump Rules, her ever-growing restaurant empire and all of her charity work, it sounds like she’s not going anywhere from the public eye anytime soon!