British pop star Lily Allen says she has received death threats after revealing she returned an adopted puppy because it ate her family’s passports.
Animal rights charity PETA published an open letter to Allen saying it was “appalled” to hear she returned the dog, adding, that the pets “should never be treated as accessories to be discarded when they become inconvenient”.
“It’s for this reason that we beg you, please, not to get another dog,” PETA added.
Allen was speaking on an episode of her Miss Me? podcast on Thursday when she revealed she had adopted the dog during the COVID pandemic, before adding: “But then it ate my passport and so I took her back to the home.”
Sharing an update in an Instagram story on Sunday, Allen said: “I have never been accused of mistreating an animal, and I’ve found this whole week very distressing.”
She also criticised the reactions of social media users as “furiously reacting to a deliberately distorted cobbling together of quotes designed to make people angry”.
Allen had mentioned on Thursday’s podcast that the pup, Mary, “was a very badly behaved dog, and I really tried very hard with her, but it just didn’t work out, and the passports was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.”
In her latest Instagram story, she wrote “this is the part of the podcast that the tabloids decided not to quote in their articles”.
She adds: “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,” Allen wrote.
“I’m OK but it has been a really tough few days that has impacted me and my family.”
The story originally came up when she told guest podcast co-host Steve Jones, a Welsh TV presenter, that her family might adopt a Chihuahua mix puppy.
She then told him about Mary after Jones asked whether she felt ready for the commitment of getting a dog with her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour.
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Allen, who lives in New York, said the pup ate her passport, as well as those of her two daughters, Ethel, 12, and Marnie, 11, whom she shares with her ex-husband, Sam Cooper.
Replacing the passports was “an absolute logistical nightmare,” she said, causing her kids to delay visiting their father in England for four or five months.
“I just couldn’t look at her. I was like, ‘You’ve ruined my life,'” she added with a laugh.
In her Instagram story on Sunday, Allen recounted having adopted Mary from a shelter in New York.
Even though she “loved her very much,” she wrote, her family struggled to accommodate the “pretty severe separation anxiety” Mary developed.
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Allen wrote that the dog couldn’t be left alone for more than 10 minutes at a time and that her family worked with a behavioural specialist from the shelter who would dog-sit Mary when they were away.
She added that “after many months and much deliberation everyone was in agreement that our home wasn’t the best fit for Mary, the person that she was rehomed with was known to us and that rehoming happened within 24 hours of her being returned”.
“We couldn’t meet Mary’s needs and her happiness and welfare were central to us making that decision, as difficult as it was,” Allen continued.