Ellen’s Puppy Breakdown

Much ink has flowed since yesterday’s Ellen Degeneres show in which she broke down and sobbed for the first five minutes of the show. Ellen had overlooked the “must keep” proviso of her shelter puppy adoption agreement and when she gifted the puppy to the children of an employee, the shelter repossessed the dog. I happened to catch the show live and was very moved by Ellen’s reaction.

Today the puppy dispute has escalated into the gossip pages, with accusations flying that Ellen’s publicist made threats against the shelter. Here’s the voice mail played for the NY Post’s Page Six: “This is Kelly Bush. We are filing a legal case against you. We are going to be contacting the media. This is not going to be good for your store or your organization. You did not do the right thing. You need to call back. There is no reason for you to take this dog. Please call back before this gets further out of hand.” Bush denies having made any threats. And of course, inevitably, there is already an online petition to “Free Iggy”.

Here’s the clip from the show, one of several floating around YouTube. I would have posted this yesterday, but the videos are being yanked almost as fast as they go up. This one probably won’t last long either.