The Ugliest Dog Contest

It's the 20th annual ugly dog contest, in California, the first one I've heard of. It's nice to have an event where you don't have to be purebred or good looking to win.

The first picture is Gus, taken from this website that has a whole gallery of other canine lookers. He went from Florida to California for the competition. He suffers skin cancer, has no hair except a little white tuft on his head, is missing a leg, and has only one eye.

Concerning Gus, that website says in part, "Every beauty contestant needs a platform, and Gus’ is to bring awareness and hope to people with pets that have been diagnosed with cancer. He is trying very hard to make it to California this year for the contest. Last year he couldn’t attend because his immune system was weakened by chemotherapy. He had a wonderful year (or should I say 7 years)..."

Some of the other dogs at that website are uglier than Gus, but maybe with pictures you can pose them any way you like, or just keep taking pictures till you get one hideous enough to post.

This other dog, the blond fur one, is Willie. The owner's comment (in part) is this, "Willie is a 9 year old mutt we rescued from the pound when he was 6 weeks old. His standout feature is his hair lip smile, which he proudly displays whenever anyone enters the room. This usually results in a double take and then, "That is the ugliest dog I've ever seen."

I love dogs. And a bit of this is sad, but a bit is funny. They're probably all great dogs, and they'll never know they are "ugly." So, they have an advantage over us in that...