The wrath of the world was unleashed on Jennifer Lawrence recently after the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook star said she’d rehomed her dog with her octogenarian parents after the chihuahua (named Princess Pippi Longstocking) bit one of her young children. “That made me want to obliterate every dog ever,” the mother-of-two said. “You don’t dump your dog just because you had kids, you learn to teach your kids to respect your pet,” fans responded online. “I really don’t like her now.”
Anger similarly ensued when West End Girl singer Lily Allen admitted that she’d ditched her adopted dog Mary on her Miss Me? podcast in 2024, after the rescue had eaten her family’s passports. She subsequently received death threats. “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,” Allen had carefully explained.
“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,” she added. “We couldn’t meet Mary’s needs and her happiness and welfare were central to us making that decision, as difficult as it was.”
The animal rights charity Peta published an open letter to Allen saying it was “appalled” to hear she had returned Mary, adding that pets “should never be treated as accessories to be discarded when they become inconvenient”. The organisation begged her not to get another dog, despite her interest in a chihuahua. After Lawrence’s ordeal with Princess Pippi Longstocking, perhaps she’s glad she didn’t.
This tale of canines being shafted out in favour of kids is an increasingly familiar one. Leading UK dog welfare charity Dogs Trust reported that more than 47,000 owners contacted them about giving up their dog during the last year, on record. Meanwhile, one cursory search on TikTok will drag up story after story told by struggling families justifying their decision to evict their once-cherished pet.
Mother-of-two Rhaya Collins never expected to give up her Jack Russell cross cocker spaniel puppy Diesel. But when she discovered she was expecting her second child, everything changed. Collins, a keen horse rider, hadn’t planned to have another baby and had been taking Diesel – a working dog – out to the stables with her. When she stopped riding due to her pregnancy, Diesel’s time spent outdoors dramatically diminished as a knock-on effect of the shift in the family structure.
“The older he got, the more hard work he got. We realised in the last two months that we just couldn’t handle his energy,” Collins explained. “At the end of the day, we just decided that the dynamic wasn’t right… We’re going to have another baby in a month and it’s just going to be me dealing with it all day: a c-section recovery, a newborn, a two-year-old and an adolescent puppy. He needs more. We weren’t fulfilling his breed needs. We weren’t fulfilling his needs at all.”
Ross McCarthy, a trainer at The London Dog Behaviour company has minimal sympathy with this genre of explanation. “Having a baby is not an excuse to rehome a dog,” he says, adding the practice is symptomatic of our wasteful modern mindset. “Back in the day, you wouldn’t even get divorced, you’d have to try and make your marriage work and live unhappily,” he says. “Now, if you don't put your toothbrush away, you’re divorced. We want everything – from a latte to a sofa – right now. Then, if we don’t like it, we get rid of it. If a dog pees on your carpet, get rid of it. It’s a weird societal shift. Everything is disposable – including your dog.”
McCarthy explains that where many couples who go through the new-house-new-dog-new-baby pipeline go wrong is not preparing their dog for a sudden infant-shaped shift in their environment. Much like the parents, a pet needs to get prepared for the impending newborn. “When you have a baby, life is turned upside down for you, but also your dog,” he says. “I typically ask people to imagine how their lives are going to change – being up at night changing the baby, having less time. You don’t want the dog on the landing. So, have the dog sleeping downstairs and get them used to less affection prior [to giving birth]. It makes for a much smoother introduction [when the baby arrives].”
He adds: “The dog can find its own equilibrium within your changing environment. There just need to be safety rules and conditioning to have both the child and the dog in the house safely. Really, a lot of the problem is reframing people’s views.”
A frequent mistake made by dog owners is considering their pet to also be their child. Although “fur baby” has become a common utterance, at the end of the day, dogs are animals, reminds McCarthy. “This is not Disneyland. This is the real world,” he says.
“Dogs are a social predator. They have teeth. They can cause damage. It’s not personal. It’s just the way dogs behave. They are a completely different species to people with different thought processes, drives, motivators – a whole different blueprint to how they view the world. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a chihuahua or a great dane – if they’re dogs, they’ve got a different moral and social code than we do.”
He continues: “A lot of the time, owners forget that dogs are dogs. They think because it has got a name and a lovely fluffy jacket that it’s their little fur baby and it’s going to love their [human] baby brother and sister. Often, they really don’t. Obviously, when children are involved, there’s zero room for error. We can’t let a dog bite a child. But they don’t understand what this smelly bundle is that everyone’s obsessed with.”
With Lawrence’s signature comedic style of patter, you’d be a fool to think she sincerely meant that she wanted to “obliterate every dog ever” after Princess Pippi Longstocking bit her son. She did, however, want Pippi out of the house. As yet, there’s been no official update on whether Lawrence has been visiting the chihuahua at her parents’ home.
Like Lawrence, Collins kept Diesel similarly close by: “We found him a really lovely home [with people] 10 minutes away who have a one-year-old dog,” the mother-of-two told her TikTok followers. “They’re super active [and] he doesn’t need to be locked away anywhere. He’s been there for a week and he’s so happy,” she promised of the cocker jack.
Little is known of where Allen’s rescued Mary ended up after she returned to the adoption centre. “The world of dog rescue is an absolute state,” warns McCarthy. “It’s the worst it’s ever been. It’s virtually impossible to bring a dog home. Yet, there are too many dogs. It’s a mess. So, the least you can do is try to create harmony and balance within the home. The majority of dogs cope quite well as long as you get the right advice.”
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