Ellen Degeneres and Iggy The Dog

Yesterday I saw on my Comcast homepage that there was a video in The Fan featuring Ellen DeGeneres breaking down on camera and sobbing her eyes out. "What," I thought to myself, "could make Ellen totally lose control of herself in such a hyper-ballistic bawling attack?" So, even though I rarely watch The Fan videos because I hate the commercials I have to sit through before the video I've selected finally plays, I bit the bullet and clicked on Ellen's face.

Turns out the source of Ellen's hysterical crying jag was a dog named Iggy that Ellen had adopted from a pet rescue center. According to her she adopted the dog, paid to have it neutered, and paid the Vet to have the dog sleep with him the night of the dog's recovery from the neutering (now there's a nice mental picture for you), and sank approximately $3000 on Iggy so it would be acclimated to come home and live with her cats. Unfortunately the cats didn't take to Iggy, and Ellen had to get Iggy out of her house.

Her solution was to give Iggy to her hairdresser who has two daughters under the age of 14. Apparently they took to Iggy like the cats couldn't, and Ellen believed she had done a good thing. When the adoption center called to find out how Iggy was doing in its new home, Ellen told the truth about Iggy's incompatibility with the cats and revealed what she'd done with the dog. Within days Iggy was picked up by the rescue center and returned to its kennels. Shortly after that, Iggy was adopted by a another family, and was apparently doing just fine.

However, the hairdresser's children were NOT fine. They wanted Iggy back, and Ellen became devastated that she had caused this problem. During her first impassioned spot about Iggy on her tv show she casually mentioned that apparently she signed some paper saying that if she did not keep the dog for any reason, it was to be returned to the pet rescue center from whence it came. Ellen spoke of this paper she signed as some inconsequential matter that could easily be ignored if the owner's of the pet shelter complied.

In fact what Ellen signed was a legal agreement stating that, indeed, if she did not keep the dog it was to be returned to the pet rescue center. It also turns out that this particular center does not adopt dogs out to families with children under the age of 14. Ellen might have known all of this had she read the contract she signed, but she didn't read it. She signed where she was told to sign and that, as far as she was concerned, was the end of that.

Only that wasn't the end of it. Because Ellen went public with this story and sobbed her way through her mea culpa, viewers got pissed off. To date the family that eventually ended up with Iggy has received death threats. The pet rescue center has taken its web page off line to avoid the threatening email messages they've started getting. Their business suffers with the current mob-mentality attack against it. All because Ellen Degeneris did not bother to read what she signed.

While Ellen has accepted full blame for causing her hairdresser's children their grief at losing Iggy, she still maintains that the pet rescue center should remove Iggy from the family who has it now and return it to her hairdresser's family. To Ellen this is the only acceptable resolution to the problem, although she has called for a halt to death threats. She says violence is not the answer here. Well, that's a BIG DUH in your court, Ellen. You have created a monster of a situation in which you don't have a milk bone to stand on, and yet you're still advocating for the pet center to do what you believe is right. If anything of a violent nature does happen to either Iggy's new adopted family or the owners of the pet center you chose to use, the blame lies entirely on your head.

By her own admission, Ellen Degeneres signed a valid contract. It is no one's fault but hers that she chose not to read it. The consequences of Ellen's failure to read have hurt other people. That is not even close to being the fault of the rescue center (whose name I will not use or link to because they've got enough trouble -- they don't need bloggers directing more negative attention to their site). What Ellen Degeneris is suggesting is that contracts be invalidated because it is not convenient for those who have signed them to honor their signature. Excuse me, but how messed up is that? It is not the way contracts work, and Ellen Degeneres has been around contracts long enough in her business to know that.

It seems to me that someone ought to tell Ellen Degeneres to sit down and STFU because she's making a fool of herself and is causing a whole big bushel of trouble for people who do not deserve it.

Ohhh, and one more thing. It is not helping to have the hairdresser's 12 year old daughter appearing on camera for Entertainment Tonight telling people she just wants her dog back. It is not now, nor was it ever her dog. Seems to me it's up to Ellen to help the child understand that. It's time for Ellen to put on her big girl panties and stop snuffling around like a victim.

In other words, Ellen.... GROW UP!