When Janeda Banelly was once taking a look to undertake a canine, an animal refuge in Arizona gave her a caution earlier than she noticed Mr. Glad Face.
“I used to be warned [he] might be inbred as a result of he was once so unpleasant,” she mentioned in a commentary. “The refuge team of workers attempted to organize me for what I used to be about to look.”
That was once closing August, when Banelly determined to undertake the then-17-year-old canine, reasoning that he “wanted a 2nd probability and deserved to be cherished.”
Not up to a 12 months later, Mr. Glad Face is legendary. On Saturday, the little dog received first position in the yearly “Global’s Ugliest Canine” festival, a tongue-in-cheek festival held on the Sonoma-Marin Honest in Petaluma, California. The development returned this 12 months after being canceled two times in a row because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regardless of the refuge’s warnings, Banelly knew lovely briefly that this was once the canine for her.
“After I first met him, he was once the happiest creature that I had ever met. He hobbled as much as me and selected me,” she mentioned. “I vowed that day, he can be so cherished that he would by no means keep in mind how terrible his earlier existence were.”
Mr. Glad Face, whose contest bio does no longer specify his breed, wasn’t anticipated to are living lengthy after his adoption. Referring to his longevity up to now, Banelly chalks it up partly to the “love” and “kindness” he’s gained.
His leisure pursuits, she says, come with “being fearlessly cute,” invoking his “elder privilege” over different pets within the family and “consuming pungent issues.”
This 12 months’s first runner-up was once a pet mill survivor named Wild Thang.