Good news: Prancer has been adopted.
The 2-year-old, 13-pound Chihuahua mutt not so charitably described as "a chucky doll in a dog's body" was listed for adoption this month in an unusually honest ad that charmed hundreds of thousands of people on social media.
Now, Prancer — the "haunted Victorian child in the body of a small dog that hates men and children" — has found a home with Ariel Davis, a 36-year-old resident of New Haven, Conn. She brought Prancer home last week, according to his newly created Instagram account.
"I read the article, I connected to it, and I was like, 'You know what? Why not? I'll just send them an email. What's the worst that could happen?' " Davis said in an interview with Today.
While rescue dog ads can be notorious for euphemisms about problematic behaviors, Prancer's viral listing did not sugarcoat his shortcomings, of which there are many: He hates men. He hates children. He hates dogs. He hates cats. He is nervous and fearful and poorly socialized.
"I've tried for the last several months to post this dog for adoption and make him sound...palatable. The problem is, he's just not," the ad read. "There's not a very big market for neurotic, man hating, animal hating, children hating dogs that look like gremlins."
The ad was written by Tyfanee Fortuna, a 25-year-old volunteer with the New Jersey-based rescue Second Chance Pet Adoption League, who posted the ad to Facebook in early April.
By then, Prancer had spent about six months in her care, a period Fortuna described as living "in the grips of the demonic Chihuahua hellscape he has created in [her] home."
Prancer came into the agency's care "terrified, untouchable, and severely overweight" after being owned by an elderly woman who "treated him like a human," Fortuna wrote in another listing on Petfinder.
"I was excited to see him come out of his shell and become a real dog," she wrote. "I am convinced at this point he is not a real dog, but more like a vessel for a traumatized Victorian child that now haunts our home."
(It should be noted that Prancer also has a handful of good qualities, which the listing described: He is loyal, he is housebroken and "even though we call him bologna face he is kind of cute to look at.")
After a tweet screen-grabbing the Facebook post went viral, the rescue was flooded with inquiries about Prancer, including the application from Ariel Davis, who told Today that she saw the ad and realized she checked all the boxes.
"I'm a single woman, I'm a single lesbian, I live with another woman, I don't have any men in my life, I work in a women's rehab, I don't have any other animals. It just felt like a perfect match," she said.
Fortuna, who fostered Prancer, posted an update Monday on her Facebook saying that she was thankful for everyone who shared the post about Prancer and that his adoption was one of the best days of her life.
"We do miss Prancer, and he was loved here despite his quirks. I have a lot of experience with toxic men, so it was easy for me to overlook his malicious tendencies and love him anyway," she wrote. "However, being relieved of the constant haunting of a Victorian child has me sleeping easier."
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