Lena Dunham barks up wrong tree with puppy post

A high-profile pet — or lack thereof — has caused the media to sic the dogs on “Girls” creator Lena Dunham after a Brooklyn shelter seemed to contradict Dunham’s acquisition myth for the well-known pup.

The rescue, Lamby — famous in his own right for being the subject of some lengthy essays by the actress and for possessing a popular Instagram account (we assume the interns did most of the legwork on that one) — was noticeably absent from social media these last few months, finally prompting Dunham to reveal in an Instagram post on June 21 that she had given Lamby away to a doggy rehab in Los Angeles.

“Lamby suffered terrible abuse as a pup that made having him in a typical home environment dangerous to him and others — we needed to be responsible to ourselves, our neighbors and especially our beloved boy. Jack and I will miss him forever but sometimes when you love something you have to let it go [especially when it requires tetanus shots and stitches],” wrote Dunham.

Lamby had taken to biting people, squealing at all hours of the night, and drinking his own urine — behaviors characteristic of past abuse, according to Matt Beisner, owner of Zen Dog, the rehab center tasked with relocating the dog. Dunham wrote that she’d tried to work with Lamby over the last four years, but that it was time to pursue other options in terms of finding the dog a home that was right for him.

Case closed — or so it would seem. Yahoo News must have had a hunch that there was more to this story (perhaps less than clairvoyantly, given Dunham’s history of “micro-scandals,” as she calls them), because they reached out to the Brooklyn Animal Rescue Coalition (BARC) — the shelter from which Dunham adopted Lamby — who were all too happy to contradict her account.

According to Yahoo:

“When she adopted the dog from us, it wasn’t crazy,” [BARC spokesman Robert] Vazquez continued. “I have pictures of the dog loving on Lena and her mom, which is weird if the dog was abused. It wouldn’t be cuddling with her or be in the bed with her ‘boyfriend’ in the pages of Vogue.”

It’s not so surprising that BARC took advantage of the opportunity to speak up. Shortly after rescuing the dog in 2013, Dunham wrote in a New Yorker piece about the adoption process that “The rescue people dump his tags and toys into a plastic evidence bag, as if he were leaving prison. It should be noted that this place is an entirely professional operation. Seasoned, systematic, these people don’t seem as if they’d ever kidnap a minor and place three canine infants in her care.”

A less than ringing endorsement, leading one to believe that the shelter may have been drooling at the opportunity to bite back.

But it’s Dunham who in that same essay may have imprudently incriminated herself while opening up (“honesty is my jam,” she wrote in the June 21 Instagram post that started this ball rolling) about her ambivalence towards adopting a pet in the first place.

“Nothing about my life these days makes me an especially good candidate for having a dog,” she wrote in the New Yorker. “For starters, I’m never home. I work all the time, and when I’m not working I’m asleep in a pile on my couch.
I have issues waking up. I understand the title of President Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope,” because it perfectly describes my relationship to setting my alarm clock for 7 a.m.

I haven’t been grocery shopping in more than a year. Currently, my refrigerator contains old yogurt, old vinegar, and whatever kind of medicines you’re told to keep cold (usually prescribed for your vagina). I am one step away from doing that awful rom-com thing where a New York City working woman with limited space but unlimited pluck fills her oven with sweaters and shoes.”

If the actress’s self-assessment can be relied upon, then perhaps she herself was less than reliable – at least as far as raising a problematic puppy was concerned.
Dunham has also been facing criticism for adopting two new puppies, who she recently brought with her on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon – ostensibly replacing Lamby before she even got rid of him.

She could have seen this coming. “Micro-scandals” have been perennially dogging Dunham over the last few years, and from a jab at NFL player Odell Beckham Jr. for ignoring her, to a New Yorker piece comparing Lamby to her Jewish boyfriend, the actress has gotten under more than a few collars.

Despite her own Jewish heritage (her mother is Jewish and Dunham claims to be “culturally Jewish”), she was accused of propagating anti-Semitic canards when she reached for the low-hanging tropes of mother-dependency and poor tipping habits in the piece.

https://twitter.com/jackantonoff/status/883394655496290308

Throughout it all, her long-term boyfriend Jack Antonoff has remained loyal, lately defending Dunham in a series of tweets proclaiming Dunham’s love for the pup.

Antonoff is apparently banking on there being at least one more difference between him and Lamby, and that hopefully Dunham won’t find a better home for her Jewish boyfriend, too.