1 month ago
14 ARTICLE AD
Lily Allen stepped in it again last week when she admitted on her podcast that she’d given away the rescue puppy that she and husband David Harbour adopted during the pandemic. Lily was showing her guest, Welsh TV host Steve Jones, a picture of a dog that she and David were looking at adopting. Steve asks her if they’re ready for that commitment and she responds, “We did adopt a dog together already but then it ate my passport and so I took her back to the home.” She then went on to explain that the dog, named Mary, had eaten her and her two children’s passports and visas, which cost her a lot of money to replace and prevented her children from being able to visit their father in London for several months.
After the podcast aired, there was a pretty big backlash against Lily online. From what I saw, most people were calling her out for laughing about giving the dog back. Apparently, it didn’t stop there, though. Lily released a long statement via Twitter on Monday morning, pushing back on the way the story had been portrayed by the media, calling it “deliberately distorted.” She also shared that she’s received a lot of hateful messages, as well as “death threats” as a result of the coverage. The statement also explains and clarifies the entire situation and then begs people to stop reacting to every clickbaity thing they read.
Allen began with a quote from her Miss Me? podcast, on which she originally discussed giving up the adopted pet. “We tried very hard and for a very long time,” she said, “but the passports were the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
She continued in her statement, “This is the part of the podcast that the tabloids decided not to quote in their articles about me ‘dumping my puppy.’ People have been furiously reacting to a deliberately distorted cobbling together of quotes designed to make people angry and as a result, I’ve received some really abhorrent messages including death threats. Some of the most disgusting comments have been all over my social media channels, and I’m really not surprised because this is exactly what those articles are designed to do.”
“We rescued our puppy Mary from a shelter in NY and we loved her very much, but she developed pretty severe separation anxiety and would act out in all manner of ways,” Allen wrote in her statement. “She couldn’t be left alone for more than 10 mins. She had three long walks a day — two by us and one with a local dog walker and several other dogs. We worked with the shelter that we rescued her from and they referred us to a behavioral specialist and a professional trainer. It was a volunteer from the shelter who would come and dog-sit her when we were away, and after many months and much deliberation everyone was in agreement that our home wasn’t the best fit for Mary.”
Allen went on to say that she’s had rescue dogs “pretty consistently throughout” her life and had never been accused of mistreating an animal, so the past few days had been “very distressing.” She ended her statement with a plea for people to “stop acting on clickbait articles when you haven’t done your due diligence,” referencing the recent “racially driven xenophobic riots” in the U.K. that she said were spurred on by “distorted propaganda.”
“It’s just all so toxic and I know that we can do better,” she said.
I listened to the original clip of Lily telling the story about Mary. On one hand, if you just take the one sound bite, it does come across like she is being very flippant about getting rid of the dog. The passport context is there, but she says things like, “I just couldn’t look at her…I was like, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’” I understand how some people – without the “clickbait” titles – could get upset. Also, and this is just a general reminder, don’t keep important, hard-to-replace documents laying around when there are children, pets, or even guests around to potentially destroy them.
On the other hand, sometimes people and animals just don’t click because they’re not the right fit. Lily’s full explanation about using a behavioral specialist and professional trainer to help with Mary’s anxiety makes the whole situation make a lot more sense. I’m glad that she clarified that the puppy was rehomed within a day to people that she knew. Wherever Mary is now, I hope she’s living her best life, full of treats and cuddles.
Lily Allen's Dog Rehomed, Doing Well With New Family, Says Rescue Group | Click to read more 👇 https://t.co/eyqEKk4qN3
— TMZ (@TMZ) August 26, 2024
"We tried very hard and for a very long time but the passports were the straw that broke the camels back"
This is the part of the podcast that the tabloids decided not to quote in their articles about me "dumping my puppy"
People have been furiously reacting to a deliberately…
— Lily Allen (@lilyallen) August 25, 2024
Photos via Instagram and credit: celebrityphotos uk / Avalon
