In April I sat down at the kitchen table with a coffee and the entry rules for the World's Ugliest Dog Contest, because I had decided Nacho was going to Sonoma County and coming home with a trophy. I want to establish at the top that this was not an insult. It was a career plan. By the bottom of the second page I had learned that the contest is not remotely what I assumed, that my dog does not qualify, and that of the two of us the one with unrealistic expectations was me.
The paperwork was the first surprise
I came to this project with a phone folder of unflattering photographs assembled over four years, most of them Nacho asleep with his tongue partially deployed. I assumed the folder was the application. According to the contest's official rules and mission page, entry is free, there are separate divisions for pedigreed dogs and mutts, every entrant must arrive with veterinary paperwork confirming good health, and a veterinarian examines each dog on site before judging begins. First place is now $5,000 and a trip to New York. The motto is "Advocate, Adopt, Adore," and the organizers' stated position is that pedigree does not define a pet.
Nothing is judged against a breed specification, which makes it the structural opposite of a conformation dog show. I had pictured a roast. What I was reading was closer to a graduation ceremony with a vet on staff. The photograph folder sat there looking like something I owed an apology for.
Chihuahua mixes have been running this thing for years
Then I looked up the record, in the manner of a man researching a franchise dynasty.
In 2007 the winner was Elwood, a two-year-old Chinese crested and chihuahua mix. CBS News reported that his owner, Karen Quigley of Sewell, New Jersey, took him in around 2005 at roughly nine months old, after his breeder decided he was too ugly to sell. He went on to appear at more than 200 events raising money for animal rescue organizations, and Quigley wrote a children's book about him.
In 2010 a chihuahua named Princess Abby won the 22nd annual contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California. Her owner, Kathleen Francis, had adopted her about five months earlier. Handed the title and a microphone, Francis told CBS News, "I don't think she's ugly at all. I think she's the most beautiful dog."
In 2011 the crown went to Yoda, a fourteen-year-old, two-pound Chinese crested and chihuahua mix. The Associated Press, in an account carried by The Christian Science Monitor, reported that Terry Schumacher of Hanford, California had found Yoda abandoned behind an apartment building and at first thought she was a rat. That year's prize was $1,000.
In 2014 the title went to Peanut, a two-year-old chihuahua and shih tzu mix. Global News reported that his owner, Holly Chandler of Greenville, North Carolina, adopted him after he was seriously burned as a puppy, and that she planned to use the win to raise awareness about animal abuse.
In 2022, when the contest returned after a two-year pandemic pause, the winner was Mr. Happy Face, a seventeen-year-old hairless Chinese crested and chihuahua mix. His owner, Jeneda Benally, told reporters that she walked into an Arizona shelter and asked to be shown the dogs nobody considered adoptable. He had come out of a hoarding situation and would not tolerate being touched. She said she hoped the win would move people toward adopting older dogs.
Nobody in this competition is losing
Five champion profiles in a row and the pattern arrives with the subtlety of a smoke alarm. Every one of them was a rescue. Every owner, handed a microphone and the word "ugliest," spent the airtime talking about adoption instead, which, given how many small dogs sit in American shelters, is less a coincidence than a census.
The streak is not unbroken. The 2025 title went to Petunia, a two-year-old hairless French bulldog mix who beat nine other dogs at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa on August 8. Deseret News reported that she came out of a backyard breeding operation in Las Vegas, had surgery for an elongated palate before she ever saw a stage, and collected $5,000. Same story, different silhouette.
Somewhere around the fourth profile I worked out that the trophy is not being handed to the dog. It goes to the person on the other end of the leash, and it means, approximately: somebody kept this one.
Nacho's evaluation went badly
I ran him through the criteria anyway. He has a full set of teeth in the intended arrangement, which our dental desk files as a triumph and a judging panel would file as a handicap. His tongue stays in except during sleep, which is not a stage-ready condition. He is an apple head of depressingly average symmetry. He has four legs in matching sizes. In four years of daily observation, the strangest thing I can report about his appearance is that one ear occasionally goes on standby while the other stays up, and I am aware that presenting this as a distinguishing feature is the behavior of a man showing baby photographs to a stranger on a bus.
Against a field of chihuahua mixes with genuine credentials, Nacho would be walked back to the parking lot for being ordinary. He is, competitively speaking, a nice-looking small brown dog. That is the worst thing I have ever had to say about him, and I have now said it in print.
So I closed the laptop and entered nobody. The folder is still on my phone, and I have opened it more in the three months since than in the four years I spent filling it. Nacho is asleep on the bad sweatshirt as I file this, tongue partially deployed, disqualifyingly handsome and entirely unaware of it, holding as far as this household is concerned the title.
