BC/R&F: Ellen DeGeneres

For the inaugural Border Collies of the Rich and Famous, I’d like to start with perhaps the most infamous and disastrous (and thankfully former) Border Collie owner:

Ellen DeGeneres
There are many reasons to dislike Ellen DeGeneres, and most people do so for all of the wrong ones.

Mostly, she’s not funny, yet she has no trouble signing TV shows and comedy specials. So I guess I’m out voted on this one.

Many hate her for being a lesbian, but come on, she landed Portia de Rossi… one of the most beautiful people alive and a marked improvement over Anne Heche. Detractors of her lifestyle are welcome to not sleep with her and go back to policing their own lives instead of trying to burn sinners at large, lest the light of their own sins draw unwanted attention to their own personal failings. Witch hunts succeed wonderfully in outing sinners, except it’s not the witches who are evil, but the peasants carrying the torches.

I’ll note that the vehemence against celebrity lesbianism seems directly proportional to the target’s deviation from feminine norms. Everyone likes the fake lesbians in the soft core porn because they look like high school cheer leaders, they’ll even tolerate cute and bubbly lesbians like nice-Rosie. But the second Rosie O’Donnell goes butch and gets the attitude to match, out the door. Not that I blame them, I wish for the return of old Rosie too.

Ellen is also overexposed and has an annoying voice. My idea of hell would involve being locked in a room with her, Kelly Rippa, and Kathy Lee Gifford. The ensuing fight to see who could out talk the others would drive one insane and deaf in a matter of minutes.

But none of those non-issues match the real reason to dislike Ellen: she’s an idiot dog owner.

You are likely familiar with her recent dust up, the “Iggy saga” where Ellen and Portia adopted a Brussels Griffon Terrier while they were in the midst of moving, sent the dog off to a trainer for 9 days, got him back only to decide that they didn’t want a puppy that might annoy their cats, and then gave the dog to Ellen’s hairdresser only to have the rescue organization find out and take the dog back for violating the adoption agreement, breaking the heart of the hairdresser’s young daughter.

My take on the issue is that all six women involved–Ellen and Portia, the Hairdresser and her daughter, and the two women who run the rescue group–are all self involved manipulative idiots who are trying to all play the “poor little girl” card at the same time. Ellen and Portia are idiots for trying to adopt a puppy that they obviously didn’t have the time for, the Hairdesser and spawn looked simply foolish on the video demanding their dog back and trying unsuccessfully to shed a tear (they didn’t really have the dog that long), and the Mutts & Moms duo come off as vengeful nanny types for wanting to remove a dog from what is almost assuredly a perfectly good home where the dog was wanted.

Now, what makes this drama even more ridiculous is that this isn’t even the first, or second, or third time that Ellen’s desire to rescue a dog has ended with her dumping it only days after returning to the reality where she is entirely incapable of caring for a dog. And the only reason I care is that the last time this happened, the dog was a Border Collie.

Here we have Ellen cuddling a Border Collie puppy that she saw on TV in a shelter in Oakland, California. Her heart bled and she raced right over to adopt little “Oakland.”

What Ellen didn’t count on was that little Oakland, being a Border Collie, does not find Leer Jets nearly as fascinating as she does, and after little Oakland woke up and demanded that Ellen DO something with her, Ellen came to a realization (that we can see clearly on her face in the photo) along the lines of “What the $@%^ am I doing with a Border Collie?!”

Her lack of foresight in adopting a Border Collie is especially heinous because of her timing. She adopted the dog during a publicity trip to San Francisco to hype her brand new talk show. Any fool could have seen that a new Border Collie puppy and a new multi-million dollar TV venture should not be mixed.

DeGeneres’ love of animals is a frequent theme on the show. This week there was much talk of a large bird that has been threatening her koi pond. Next week, Bay Area fans can expect at least some mention of a dog she adopted during her recent Bay Area trip.

While visiting KNTV’s Battery Street studios on Sept. 5, she saw another newscast featuring an Oakland SPCA orphan. A few phone calls later, and the 12- week-old female border collie was rushed to the airport.

The dog has since been adopted (DeGeneres is calling her “Oakland”), and is now a Los Angeles resident. Oakland has gone on an incredible journey, and in some ways, that makes her a better guest than whoever is on the cover of Vanity Fair this week.

“People keep saying, ‘What are you going to do to make this (show) different?’ ” DeGeneres said. “I don’t know, and I hope I never do know. I hope I never figure out what people like about me or what they don’t like about me. It’s none of my business.”

Ellen DeGeneres is perhaps the most spectacular failure of a celebrity Border Collie owner, and she so inelegantly demonstrates why Border Collies are a poor choice for the shallow Hollywood social climbers.

Ellen ditched “Oakland” not long after she adopted her.

But thankfully, all of the Rich and Famous are not like Ellen.

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.