TIME asks (and asks) Newt about Seamus on top of the car; Finally he bites.

Seamus Story Paints a Picture of Mitt

TIME:"Well, what do you think of it?"

Gingrich: "Well, I just, you know, I'd rather not have been in the kennel all the way to Canada. Personally doesn't strike me as a very good thing to have done. But that's just my personal bias, you know....

"I think that there are many characteristics that come out in the course of a presidential campaign. From the use of words, like 'I like firing people' — which didn't mean he liked firing people but he said, 'I like firing people,' which sounds like I like firing people even though it wasn't — to putting a dog on the top of a car for nine hours. All these different things paint a picture. All of us have pictures. And the governor has to figure out whether or not that picture is electable.