The PETA Files

Written by PETA

Posted 10-18-2007, 4:52 PM

TimeInc/Creative Commons

For anyone who may have missed this story, Ellen Degeneres adopted a puppy from a shelter a little while back, but gave him away to her hairdresser when she found that he wasn’t getting along very well with her cats. When the folks from the shelter called to check up and found out what had happened, they took the dog back from the hairdresser, who didn’t meet the standards of a background check that the shelter requires of anyone adopting an animal.

An awful lot of people have been contacting us to find out where PETA stands on the issue, so I figured I’d share our official statement on the subject, since there really is a bunch going on with this story. Here it is:

At a time when so many people in Hollywood—like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton—are making impetuous "pet" purchases, PETA commends Ellen DeGeneres for adopting a homeless animal from a shelter rather than buying a dog. Every purchase of an animal from a pet store sentences to death an animal who is desperately waiting in an animal shelter for a home. We know that Ellen was trying to do the right thing in finding the dog a new home. She just missed a step in neglecting to contact the agency first. PETA does think that the agency's policies of doing home checks and not allowing people to transfer animals to others are good rules that protect animals. Ellen was just trying to do the right thing—she is a huge animal lover—and she surely has learned from this experience.

So there you have it. It really sucks that Ellen had a bad experience after doing the compassionate thing and adopting from a shelter, but you can’t really fault a shelter for going the extra mile to make sure everyone who ends up with one of their animals is likely to be a responsible guardian. I guess we just see both sides of the story on this one.