British pop artist Lily Allen has disclosed that she has been subjected to death threats following her announcement about returning an adopted puppy that had chewed up her family’s passports.
The animal rights organization PETA issued an open letter to Allen expressing their “shock” at her decision to return the dog, asserting that pets “should never be regarded as mere accessories to be discarded when they become a nuisance”.
“For this reason, we earnestly request you, please, not to adopt another dog,” PETA added.
Allen spoke during an episode of her Miss Me? podcast on Thursday when she shared that she had adopted the dog during the COVID pandemic, subsequently stating: “But then she chewed my passport, so I returned her to the shelter.”
Providing an update in an Instagram story on Sunday, Allen remarked: “I have never been accused of animal mistreatment, and this entire week has been incredibly distressing for me.”
She also criticized the backlash from social media users as “angrily responding to a deliberately twisted amalgamation of quotes crafted to provoke outrage”.
On Thursday’s podcast, Allen had mentioned that the dog, Mary, “was quite a misbehaved pet, and I put forth great effort with her, but it just didn’t work out, and the passports were the final straw, so to speak.”
In her recent Instagram story, she noted, “this is the portion of the podcast that the tabloids chose not to include in their articles”.
She continued: “I’ve received some truly abhorrent messages, including death threats; some of the most vile comments have plagued my social media platforms, and I’m not particularly surprised, as this is precisely the intent of those articles,” Allen wrote.
“I’m alright, but it has been a challenging few days that have affected both me and my family.”
The topic emerged when she mentioned to her guest co-host, Steve Jones, a Welsh presenter, that her family was considering adopting a Chihuahua mix puppy.
She went on to discuss Mary when Jones inquired whether she felt prepared for the responsibility of bringing a dog into their lives, especially with her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour.
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Allen, residing in New York, disclosed that the puppy devoured her passport and those of her two daughters, Ethel, 12, and Marnie, 11, with whom she shares custody with her former spouse, Sam Cooper.
Replacing the passports turned out to be “an absolute logistical nightmare,” she recounted, delaying her children’s trip to visit their father in England for four to five months.
“I simply couldn’t bear to look at her. I was like, ‘You’ve ruined my life,'” she chuckled.
In her Instagram story on Sunday, Allen recounted adopting Mary from a shelter in New York.
Although she “adored her extremely,” she expressed that her family faced challenges accommodating the “quite severe separation anxiety” Mary exhibited.
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Allen noted that the dog couldn’t be left alone for over 10 minutes at a stretch, and her family collaborated with a behavioral specialist from the shelter who would care for Mary when they were away.
She mentioned that “after many months and extensive contemplation, everyone agreed that our household wasn’t the right environment for Mary; the individual she was reassigned to was familiar to us, and the rehoming took place within 24 hours of her being returned.”
“We couldn’t fulfill Mary’s needs, and her happiness and welfare were paramount in our decision to proceed, as painful as it was,” Allen concluded.
