Every so often a rescue story writes its own punchline. This is one of them.
In November 2023, with Elvis Presley back in the cultural bloodstream thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, another Elvis was quietly having a much worse week. This one was a three-year-old American Pit Bull Terrier mix, and he had just become the only dog nobody chose.
The dog who got left
Elvis had already had a hard start. He came into Chicago’s Anti-Cruelty Society (ACS) as a stray with a fractured pelvis. Once he healed, he turned into exactly the kind of dog shelters love to show off: affectionate, silly, and already well-trained, ready for a family. So the ACS entered him in its “Fall in Love” adoption event, where adoption fees were waived and the goal was to clear the board.
It nearly worked. Dozens of animals went home that day, 39 cats and 22 other dogs found families. Elvis did not. When the event ended, he was the one dog left standing in an empty room.
The internet does its thing
The ACS took Elvis’s story to social media, describing him in the kind of language that makes strangers cry into their phones: a goofy three-year-old with a grin that could light up a room. It worked, spectacularly. The post rocketed across the country, racking up thousands of shares and getting picked up by dozens of news stations. Overnight, the dog nobody wanted at a single event became a dog millions of people were rooting for.
Enter the most fitting adopter alive
Among the people who saw Elvis on the news were a Chicago couple, Drew Wilhelm and Loren Agron, who fell for him immediately and drove in to meet him. They described themselves and the dog as a little band of misfits who had simply found each other, which would have been a sweet enough ending on its own.
But the coincidence went further. Agron is no stranger to the ACS, having hosted fundraisers for the shelter in drag as his alter ego, Debbie Fox, familiar to fans of OutTV’s Camp Wannakiki. And here is the kicker: Agron used to perform as an Elvis impersonator, working the floor as a server nicknamed “Elvis Parsley” at the Chicago diner Ed Debevic’s, where he is now a manager. A dog named Elvis, adopted by a man who once made a living being Elvis. Needless to say, the dog is keeping his name.
The part worth remembering
It is a genuinely charming story, but underneath the coincidence is a plain, repeatable truth: Elvis was a great dog the entire time. He was healthy, trained, and sweet on the day he was passed over, and on the day he went viral, and on the day he went home. Nothing about him changed except that enough people finally looked. That is the case for shelter dogs in a sentence. The overlooked one at the back of the kennel is very often not a lesser dog, just an unmet one. Shelters like the ACS are full of Elvises who have not had their news-cycle moment yet, and you do not have to wait for one to go find them.
References
- “Former Elvis Presley impersonating waiter adopts a dog named Elvis.” Chicago Sun-Times, November 20, 2023.
- “‘Elvis’ adopted by former Elvis impersonator after being only dog left at Anti-Cruelty Society.” WGN-TV.
- “Dog Elvis Overlooked by Adopters Finds Home With Impersonator of The King.” Newsweek.
