By: Yimo Liu

About 50 years ago, people created a world’s ugliest dog contest. Each year, a new dog is crowned the ugliest dog in the world. This year, a small dog named Scooter won the contest.

Scooter is seven years old and a Chinese Crested dog. He is hairless except for a few white spiky hairs on the top of his head. And most importantly, he was ugly.

“In the cutest way possible, he kind of reminds me of a hairy hippopotamus,” one of the judges announced.

Scooter’s back legs face toward his rear end which makes him unable to walk normally. Despite this deformity, he still learned many unbelievable tricks that taught him how to walk. Scooter lifts his back legs up, then walks with his front paws. This way, he could climb onto curbs on roads. But, as you know, walking with his front paws is hard. Scooter needs to stop everytime he gets tired. Just imagine that you can’t walk, and you have to walk with your hands. That would be torture to you. So people decided to make a small cart with wheels that attaches to Scooter’s back legs. Because of this, he could walk much more easily … and quickly! Scooter managed the little cart well, and it slowly became his “legs”.

This ugly dog contest wasn’t made to make fun of those poor ugly dogs out there in the world. It’s meant to encourage adoption for all dogs. Just because some dogs are ugly, doesn’t mean they’re bad. They were born ugly, so no one can complain about them; it’s not their fault. It’s just like people with different skin colors.

Now that the ugly dog contest can help dogs get new homes, it will make them happy that people care about them.