Portia & Ellen, wedding day, with Wolf and Mabel
She might have begun her working life as a vacuum cleaner saleswoman, a TGI Friday’s waitress and an oyster shucker in New Orleans, but we’re sure glad she chose comedy in the end. The first female comic invited for a chat on the couch with Johnny Carson. The first openly gay leading role in a sitcom. The first show to win the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show in its first three years. The first Oscars host to order pizza in for the entire audience and take a selfie that “breaks” Twitter. Ellen DeGeneres has achieved a lot of firsts. But, ask her how she feels about that and she remains humble. “The thing I focus on is my path, and if it somehow impacts other people, good,” she reveals. “I don’t do it to be a first. I do it for my challenges.” Amen.
As Ellen said, “We both wore our white suits.” Ellen and Wolf
Any of those accomplishments is enough to respect her. What I love most about Ellen is what she loves most (well, maybe besides wife, Portia) – animals. “I cannot imagine not going home to animals,” Ellen shares about having a heart for creatures great and small. “They are the closest thing to God. They don’t harbor resentment. Somebody put it really well: If you hurt a dog, the dog may, years later, remember you hurt him if he sees you. But he’s not going to spend all those years planning how to hurt you the next time he sees you. The compassion I have for animals is from the earliest memories I have. I kept files and copied things out of encyclopedias for what was going to be my office, because I was going to be a veterinarian.”
Portia out for a walk with new rescue, Augie, and Mabel
Today, Ellen and Portia have three cats and three dogs. The cats are Charlie, George and Chairman, and are all rescues. The pups are Wolf, a Maltese-Poodle mix, Mabel, a Standard Poodle and the newest family member, a little Jack Russell mix named Augie. All are rescues; Mabel was spared from living in a kennel after being discarded as a show dog once she became too old. Wolf was a rescue off of the street. Ellen saw a guy mistreating Wolf, swinging him around and doing things to him. She went over and offered him money for the dog, which he’d smuggled in from Mexico. At the time, Wolf was malnourished and he couldn’t stand up. It took a long time to hear her tell it, but eventually, he turned Wolf over to her. And, Augie was adopted from a local L.A. shelter last Thanksgiving and has issues, like many rescues. Ellen and Portia have brought in celebrity animal trainer, Brandon McMillan to help. “Augie has issues,” Ellen says. “Wolf is afraid of shiny surfaces, so he won’t walk on anything like that. And, one dog will only go up the stairs, another will only go down the stairs.” Oh, boy. I thought we had big challenges with our rescue, Jasper!
Ellen loving her dogs
But, talk about love? You can see it in each of Ellen and Portia’s eyes how much they love these dogs. Ellen talks about their personalities: “Mabel looks like she was a show dog and walks like she is a show dog. She’s actually more attached to Portia than she is to me. She’s very much attached to Portia and Wolf is just a sweet dog, needy for love from anybody…Augie is a sweet dog but he has a lot of issues…And, all the cats are slightly different. They all have their different personalities. Charlie has a dog personality where she has to be wherever people are and follow you from room to room.”
Ellen is so committed to helping animals, she rescues as many as she can and finds them homes. In one such heavily publicized instance a few years back, DeGeneres rescued an adorable Affenpinscher mix puppy named Iggy from a local L.A. shelter, called Mutts & Moms. She spent $3000 between vetting the dog and trainers to help little Iggy get along with their cats. However, it became very clear that Iggy had more energy than their cats could handle, and it just wasn’t a good fit. Trying to do the right thing by Iggy, she gave him to her hairdresser, a woman she knew very well, saw every day and whose family were looking to adopt a dog and provide a loving home. Once the shelter found out Ellen gave the dog away, they demanded the dog be pulled from the household and returned to them. Ellen was so distraught at the trouble she felt she’d caused this little guy and the family, she broke down and sobbed on her tv show in front of the world, telling the story and taking responsibility for the outcome. It’s not something you see every day, in a world where putting on your game face is the general rule. The episode went viral and wreaked even more havoc on Ellen’s life. Iggy’s story ended well, though; he was adopted by another loving family and even ended up doing a national Public Service Announcement for pet adoption awareness.
The now-famous little Iggy
In 2008, Ellen also became an owner of Halo Purely for Pets food company. She had learned of the brand while looking for a healthy food for her own dogs, and ended up a customer before she was an owner.
Both Ellen and Portia live a vegan lifestyle. Portia talks about her a-ha moment, when she chose to become a vegan, in a moving article on Oprah.com. An excerpt: Everything was so quiet that I think the animals forgot I was there. Then I witnessed something extraordinary: The cows formed a single-file line, and one by one they touched noses with the new horse as a greeting. The calves wouldn’t approach on their own, so one of the cows nudged them forward. Each of the babies touched the horse’s nose, then jumped around and played like little children. I started crying and thought, I can’t possibly keep eating these animals.
Ellen hanging with Mabel
Ellen and Portia continue to do great things for animals every day. Ellen sums it up when she says, “A life to me with animals, watching them and being with them, is all I need…I just want to love animals and be around them all the time.” Check out Ellen’s interview with trainer, Brandon McMillan, for some very cool stories of Brandon’s adventures and of Ellen’s challenges with training her dogs.
What are your challenges training your dog? Tell me about it in the Comments.
