What Barry describes as Otto’s “biggest diva behavior” reminds me of Frank, and it also makes me feel like these dogs aren’t always forced to sing for their ugly-dog supper. Sure, they’re able to keep it together for the competition-day crowds, and many of them really are remarkably peaceful by nature. Michelle Grady is the owner of a pearl-clad pug named Jinny Lu, a rescue brought to the US from Korea; she says her dog’s forever-protruding tongue has been pulled “countless” times, but Jinny Lu never minds. Still, at the end of the day, this cross section of ugly dogs is still just…dogs. Even if they, like Jinny Lu, visit schools to teach kids about the importance of adopting differently abled pets, or—like Zebuoodle, a tiny, fluffy thing I admire as she devours a handful of fried mozzarella pieces—they moonlight as service therapy dogs with the ability to go, as Zeboodle’s owner says, “way deep into people’s souls.”
Once all nine of the World’s Ugliest Dog contestants have walked the red carpet accident-free, it’s officially time for them to meet the judges. Their owners introduce them, and I note how geographically diverse the pool is. Dogs and their owners have come from as far away as Poland and as close as nearby Santa Rosa, from all over the South, the Midwest, and the East Coast to try and take home the top-dog prize of $5,000 and a trip to New York City to appear on the Today show.
Laura Brown with her dog Pinky.
It’s not entirely a surprise to me, then, that Jinny Lu takes home first place. Pearls on a pug is an unbeatable combination, and Jinny Lu has a distinctly unlovely but endearing gravitas to her that belies her six years. I’m thrilled to see one of my private favorites take home the $3,000 second-place prize: an albino Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix named Pinky who cannot leave the house without SPF 25 to protect his whitish pink, once mange-afflicted skin and who resembles, from alternate angles, a tiny pig or a larger-than-average rat.
