Well, for now anyway. The Ellen DeGeneres puppy story has been all over the news lately and a lot of people have been asking us for our stance on the issue, but I have to say I was pretty surprised by the reaction after I posted PETA’s statement on the subject yesterday. Comments ranged from complaints that we were being too soft on her to admonitions that we were being too hard on her to some very impassioned attacks against both Ellen herself and the shelter involved.

But this just isn’t a black-and-white issue. There really are two legit sides to the story, and I honestly can’t understand why anyone would paint either Ellen or Mutts & Moms (the shelter that confiscated her dog) as a villain here. For one thing, the shelter has rules in place for a very good reason—to protect the animals. It seems like in this case they really could have taken the time to make a more thorough evaluation in the hopes of avoiding another traumatic move for the animal (there are certainly plenty of suitable homes for animals with kids in them), but you can’t fault a shelter for enforcing the rules it has in place to prevent animals from ending up in bad situations.

Now as far as Ellen is concerned, she screwed up by not reading what happened to be some really important fine print, but that doesn’t make her a bad person. On the contrary, with so many vapid celebrities running around with puppies under their arms that they picked up from some Hollywood pet store without so much as a passing thought for the millions of homeless animals in shelters, Ellen’s choice to adopt was commendable, and I hope that message doesn’t get lost in all the partisan ranting about this story that’s going on in the media.