Rosie, our poster child for backyard breeding, passed away last night. Our hearts are broken and our thoughts with her mom, Cinnamon.

Since this post was published, we’ve had a couple of updates on the death of Rosie:

Today is a very sad day for us at Dogster HQ. For more than a year we’ve been following the inspiring story of Rosie, the little disfigured (and yet just so lovable) Chihuahua who was rescued from a hoarder/backyard breeder situation and became the poster child for the dangers of this sort of breeding.

This morning, we received news that our little girl passed away.

Cinnamon Muhlbauer, Rosie’s adoptive owner, had her friend Lisa Murphy post the following message on Rosie’s Facebook page late last night:

“Rosie developed pneumonia and because of her abnormal trachea, it progressed so quickly that I lost her at 9:28 pm [last night]. She was in my arms and I was holding her tightly willing her to stay. I am devastated and destroyed. My whole world was that little girl and I don’t know how to carry on even though I have to for the sake of the other dogs in my home. I am going to have her cremated tomorrow. Eddie is in India and is devastated as well. I am not announcing this right now. I don’t even want to live without her let alone try to explain that to anyone else. I am lost without my girl.”

Prefacing Cinnamon’s message, Lisa wrote:

“This is very hard to post this because I’m trying not to look at Rosie’s beautiful little face on her Facebook page while I write this and I’m bawling my eyes out, so please excuse the typos. This is Lisa Murphy (Rosie’s and Cinnamon’s friend and helper) and I am am sharing this on behalf of Cinnamon. PLEASE NOTE: Cinnamon WILL NOT be back to Rosie’s page to comment for a long time, so please … no questions!! I cannot answer them and can hardly check this page myself so please read this post carefully and try and remember that Rosie’s page may be very very quiet for a long time.”

Please see the interview Dogster’s Maria Goodavage did with Cinnamon and Rosie last year if you haven’t already. Maria and I were reminiscing about Rosie this morning after the news broke, and our hearts are heavy. Much love to Cinnamon and her family from all of us here at HQ.

Read more about Rosie: