The animal shelter in Brooklyn where Lena Dunham adopted her dog has disputed her recent claims that her dog was “abused” prior to adoption.
“We checked the records for Lamby,” Robert Vazquez, a spokesperson for the BARC Shelter where she adopted her dog in 2013 told Yahoo Thursday. “He [Lamby] was ‘owner surrendered, not enough time,’ so we do not know where she got ‘multiple owners that abused the dog.'”
In a piece Dunham wrote for the New Yorker in 2013 she claimed that her dog had “three other homes, three other names, but now he’s mine mine mine.”
“When she adopted the dog from us, it wasn’t crazy,” Vazquez said. “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.”
He went on to say he was there “the four times Lena visited Lamby” before the adoption “because I’ve been in-charge of the dogs for the last 14-15 years at BARC. If Lamby had a bad past or was abused, do you think BARC would have adopted him to Lena knowing she’s a new star and put her–or the dog–in that situation? ”
“We would have told her if the dog had issues,” he added. “We are a no-kill shelter. We don’t lie about the dogs’ histories because that gets them returned–and mentally it’s not good for dogs.”
In June, the 31-year-old actress shared a photo of the dog “Lamby” on her Instagram and explained he “suffered terrible abuse as a pup” and that she had to give him up after “four years of challenging behavior and aggression that could not be treated with training or medication or consistent loving dog ownership.”
On Thursday, Dunham addressed the statement from BARC with another Instagram post standing by her decision.
Sources close to Dunham told Fox News that she had Lamby examined by six veterinarians who “deemed that the dog had an abusive past and brain damage.”
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles center where Dunham took her dog claimed the dog was a “hot mess and a train wreck” when he arrived, was drinking his own urine, and heavily medicated.