'Our dog could be UK's ugliest – but he's beautiful to us' – Kent Online

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A woman whose French bulldog has been shortlisted as one of the UK’s ugliest dogs says he is just “aesthetically challenged”.
Emma Stephens, who lives in Cliffe Woods, near Rochester, decided to enter her dog Milo into the competition after seeing it advertised on This Morning.
The 46-year-old said: “We always laugh about him being a bit aesthetically challenged, when he wakes up from a particularly deep sleep his tongue is stuck out and he gets that sort of underbite look sometimes when he’s relaxing.
“We always joke that he’s got the sort of face only a mother could love and things like that, so just for a bit of fun we entered him into the contest because there aren’t that many contests out there for dogs with quirks.
“You get competitions for pretty looking dogs but it’s nice to celebrate the ones that are a bit challenged with their looks.”
Emma moved to Medway 18 months ago with her husband, Barry, and daughter Amber.
She rescues animals and ended up taking on Milo when her neighbour had an unwell pup in a litter.
She said: “I kept him for a few days to make sure he was getting stronger before re-uniting him with his mum but when we put him back with his mum, we tried on several occasions, and he just wasn’t thriving at all.
“He was at death’s door so in the end we agreed to take him on and keep him, but over the next coming weeks it became apparent that he had other health issues.”
When Milo was around two or three weeks old, Emma was feeding him one evening and noticed that his left eye was bulging.
She took him to a vet as soon as it was open the next morning, and was told he had a severe eye infection.
As he was just a puppy, he hadn’t yet opened his eyes, and they were sealed shut with bacteria trapped inside.
The vet tried to open it but was unable to and he was given antibiotics, but his eye ended up imploding which Emma says was “horrific”.
She explained: “We nursed him through it, we had painkillers and medication, and came through it.
“But when he was around six-to-eight weeks old he started to lose the hair on the front of his head and looked a bit bulbous so we took him to the vets and it turned out he had hydrocephalus which is fluid in the brain.
“The vet said it doesn’t always have a very good prognosis, they can have seizures and all that sort of thing and they said I might want to consider putting him to sleep but for me that’s never an option.
“I’ve nursed lots of animals in the past from the brink of death through all sorts of things that vets said to put them to sleep over and with lots of love, dedication and time it can be done.
“As long as they’re doing okay and they’ve got the will to live, then I will go as far as they want to and luckily he fought through and made it.
“It’s a wait and watch approach, he might be fine with it until the end of his days and live a good long life, nobody knows, but there are signs to look for if it does start to affect him.”
Emma said she doesn’t think Milo is ugly, just “ugly-cute”.
The one-year-old pup is now one of the finalists for the competition, hosted by Parrotprint.com.
A professional makeover and photo session prize is being offered by the photography company to the dog crowned the most hideous in the country.
“We appreciate that he’s not everyone’s cup of tea but he’s beautiful to us,” Emma said.
“I don’t think any dog is truly ugly, they all have their loveable ways but I think it’s nice for the underdog to be celebrated and have a title and a bit of a fuss as well.”
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