Remember Prancer, the neurotic Chihuahua who was deemed unadoptable? The one whose foster mother described him as “not a real dog, but more like a vessel for a traumatized Victorian child that now haunts our home.” Prancer’s story went viral thanks to the hilarious Facebook post from his foster mom, Tyfanee Fortuna, who was fostering Prancer for Second Chance Pet Adoption League in New Jersey. The ad was then reposted on Twitter, where it has over 300K likes.
This is the best thing I’ve read in awhile. pic.twitter.com/rdn3X6GeWH
— Hot Little Mongoose (@HLMongoose) April 9, 2021
The internet quickly fell in love with tiny grumpy king, despite Fortuna’s assertion that “There’s not a very big market for neurotic, man hating, animal hating, children hating dogs that look like gremlins.” But despite Prancer’s myriad issues, Fortuna kept hope alive, writing “I know finding someone who wants a Chucky doll in a dogs body is hard, but I have to try.”
Plenty of people offered to adopt Prancer, but he ultimately found a new mom in Ariel Davis, a lesbian cook who works in the kitchen at a womens’ rehabilitation center in New Haven, Connecticut (Davis was previously a patient at the center when she was battling a marijuana addiction). Buzzfeed News traveled to their home to follow up with the internet sensation and his loving new parent.
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When Davis adopted Prancer, she was shocked and overwhelmed by the amount of online hate and vitriol she received. She said, “There was a point where I could not log in because there’d be a story about me and Prancer and there’d be 12,000 comments: Why have you given this dog to a drug addict? What happens if she relapses? What’s going to happen to the dog? This girl has already given away two other dogs. What’s gonna stop her from giving away this dog? Oh, a lesbian, she probably is three months late on rent and drives around in a pickup truck, … and I’m like, actually, her rent is current and I have a new Honda Civic — it’s great.”
Davis found something of a soulmate in Prancer, as she related to the dog’s hard journey in life. “I was brought to tears due to the intense connection I felt when reading about Prancer’s story,” she wrote. Davis, who spends her time writing fantasy fiction and playing World of Warcraft, is now working on a children’s book about Prancer’s story. She’s even had interest from producers hoping to turn their story into a movie.
“There’s some times where I look at him like, You’re the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen,” she said. “And then there’s some times I’m like, What hole did you crawl out of? You are the biggest baloney.”
It’s a cliché to say that rescue dogs rescue their adopters as well, but that’s clearly the case here. “I took care of myself. I took care of my situation,” Davis said. “Now I’m able to take care of a dog, and good things are coming to me.” Prancer’s happy ending reminds us that no matter how broken we feel or how bad our past was, there is always someone waiting on the other side to love us, just as we are.
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(via Buzzfeed News, image: screencap/Twitter/Second Chance Pet Adoption League)
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