Below is the confession of the owner of the dog with a deformed body that won the first prize in the World’s Ugliest Dog contest.

Ten years ago, a colleague at an animal shelter called me and told me to see a dog that had just been taken in by a man, saying that he had found three dogs but could not keep them. . I’ve worked here for 20 years and have seen many exceptional animals, but never one that looked like this.

“He said bring three dogs,” I heard someone say as I was on my way to meet them. “But there is a pig or something more than a dog.”

Quasi Modo is the name I gave it, after the character The Hunchback in the novel Notre Dame de Paris . He was about a year old at the time and was born with short spine syndrome that made his back shorten, head retracted into his neck and could not move. If it wants to see something, it has to turn its whole body, not its head.

Because of his deformed body, no one would adopt Quasi Modo , and I did not hesitate to adopt him, partly because I originally liked strange and unusual animals. I also tried giving it nice names like Flowers or Tulips but they didn’t match. I know naming him Quasi Modo won’t help him, but the name suits him better anyway.

Quasi has to live with gossip from everyone it meets, all because of its deformed appearance. “Oh, what is that?” Every time I hear these words and stares I answer that it is the dog. You might expect monstrous animals to act monstrously, but Quasi isn’t like that. It is very cute and friendly, meeting anyone it will rub their feet, then they will bend down to pat its head. If someone passes by, it will kick them in the leg to get used to it because it can’t raise its head.

For years, my friends kept telling me I should enter the World’s Ugliest Dog contest in Petaluma, California, but it was too far from where I live in Florida. Finally, 2 years ago, my husband and I flew Quasi there to attend. It came in second overall, but the audience support was so great that I had the feeling that we could win if we attended again.

So last summer we went back to compete again. A total of 26 dogs participated, all ugly in the same way: hair standing up like a crest, bare hair, crooked teeth, tongue falling out of the snout. Quasi isn’t the ugliest, but it’s certainly the weirdest. And while the other dogs showed fear in front of the crowd, Quasi went around to get to know everyone. When it came to the voting round, the crowd cheered for Quasi’s name and I think the judges couldn’t help but choose his name.

After we won, we were led everywhere to take pictures and take pictures. Everyone wants to take a selfie with Quasi . For a long time, wherever we were, people would point and say, “Look, that’s the dog on TV.”

We got a lot of criticism, everyone said we were cruel, but you have to have a sense of humor to enter the bad dog show. We’re not teasing its ugliness, we’re just celebrating its differences. We don’t think it’s ugly either , and we love it enough to see that it’s okay to have a little fun.

Working at an animal center, I could afford to adopt pretty normal dogs if I wanted to, but Quasi showed everyone that it doesn’t have to be a perfectly beautiful animal to be loved. It is friendly with all people and all animals, even sleeping with cats. I don’t feel sorry for it either. It taught us patience and taught us not to suffer too much with life’s problems. It doesn’t feel inferior to itself. Nor does he look in the mirror and say to himself, “Oh, how ugly am I!”

Because Quasi is the embodiment of optimism and joy in life.