Lily Allen Addresses 'Distressing' Backlash After Comments About Returning Her Dog To Shelter

Lily Allen has spoken out after finding herself at the centre of backlash over comments she made about returning the dog she and her family previously adopted from a shelter.

On an episode of her BBC Sounds podcast Miss Me? last week, the Smile singer shared that she and her husband David Harbour were looking to adopt a dog.

However, she went on to say that the family had prior experience with one canine they’d “back to the home” from which they found her when she ate the family’s passports.

“We actually did adopt a dog already, but then it ate my passport and so I took her back to the home,” Lily said.

“She ate all three of our passports and they had our visas in. And I cannot tell you how much money it cost me to get everything replaced, because it was in Covid and so it was just an absolute logistical nightmare.

“And because the father of my children lives in England, I couldn’t take them back to see their dad for like four months, five months, because this fucking dog had eaten the passports.”

“I just couldn’t look at her,” Lily continued. “I was like ‘you’ve ruined my life’.”

Notably, the Brit Award winner did add: “She was a very badly behaved dog and I really tried very hard with her, but it just didn’t work out and the passports were the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak.”

After various media outlets began reporting on Lily’s comments, she was heavily criticised on social media.

This led to her speaking out in a lengthy X post on Sunday, accusing the tabloid press of “deliberately distorting” her account by not including all of her quotes in their reporting.

“People have been furiously reacting to a deliberately distorted cobbling together of quotes designed to make people angry and as a result, 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,” she wrote.

“I’m OK but it has been a really tough few days that has impacted me and my family.”

Lily explained: “We rescued our puppy Mary from a shelter in NY and we loved her very much, BUT she developed pretty severe separation anxiety and would act out in all manner of ways.

“She couldn’t be left alone for more than 10 [minutes], she had three long walks a day, two by us and one with a local dog walker, and several other dogs, we worked with the shelter that we rescued her from and they referred us to a behavioural specialist and a professional trainer, it was a volunteer from the shelter who would come and dog sit her when we were away, and 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.”

Lily continued: “I’ve had rescue dogs pretty consistently throughout my life since I was four years old, I’m pretty good at ascertaining a dog’s needs, I have never been accused of mistreating an animal, and I’ve found this whole week very distressing.

“Please stop acting on clickbait articles when you haven’t done your due diligence, I know that people sending horrible messages hadn’t listened to the podcast but had been reading the Mail Online and the follow-up articles and videos that followed, I could tell by the language they were using exactly what their sources were.

“It is distortion, and all you are doing by engaging with these stories is making more money for people who profit from [sowing] division and tearing us all apart. In the same way that misinformed people acted on distorted propaganda that led to the racially driven xenophobic riots we’ve seen recently in the UK, it’s just all so toxic and I know that we can do better.”

She also engaged in a back-and-forth with the divisive animal rights organisation Peta, who she accused of “adding fuel to the fire”.

HuffPost UK contacted Lily Allen’s team last week for comment but did not receive a response.