Brodie the Canine Goes Viral After ‘Picasso’ Face Damage

One lovely canine is spreading pleasure with a novel twist.

Brodie, a 6-year-old blended breed with an off-kilter snout, has amassed greater than 1.5 million followers on his Instagram and TikTok pages displaying glimpses of his day-to-day life.

However again in 2019, he was simply one other canine on the lookout for an opportunity. 

“He was born at a rescue referred to as Outdated Macdonald Kennels and his canine mother was a 10-month-old stray,” Amanda Richter, his now-owner, tells PEOPLE on this week’s problem. “She bit him on the pinnacle when he was about 2 weeks outdated. They thought he was going to develop usually, and perhaps it was wishful pondering — however as he received older, his face simply began to get slightly twistier.”

Partially blind in a single eye and with a barely shut jaw, Brodie might need required “slightly additional care,” however that didn’t cease Richter, 35, from falling in love when she first noticed him on the shelter’s Fb web page in 2019.

“The second I noticed his image on Fb, I fell in love together with his face … It’s clearly laborious to not as a result of the entire world appears to have fallen in love with it,” the Canada-based photographer says about discovering Brodie.

“I used to be like, ‘I have to go meet this canine,’ and I went and met Brodie and it was love at first sight,” Richter continues. “We got here dwelling with him the identical day.”

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After settling into their new life collectively, Richter observed feedback from individuals who had seen Brodie on the shelter’s Fb web page and requested that the adopter proceed to share updates themselves.

“I made a decision to do it, as a result of who doesn’t love taking photos of their canine? And it simply blew up,” Richter says. “Amanda Seyfried, Leona Lewis and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump all observe. It’s hilarious to me.”

Referring to Brodie as a murals that “really embodies Picasso’s art work” — “all the pieces’s barely misplaced and completely different and crooked and simply, you may actually put him subsequent to a type of work and it appears to be like like him,” she says — Richter believes it’s his character that has attracted the world to him.

“Individuals simply love him. He is a beacon of sunshine, I believe, for folks,” she says. “He has a lot love from world wide, and folks do suppose he is stunning, though he’s so not the typical-looking canine.”

It was by Brodie’s Instagram that Richter added one other member to her household. “One in every of his followers messaged me in 2022 a few canine up for adoption in Texas, saying I had to assist her, and I immediately fell in love. It was meant to be,” Richter says of her now 4-year-old blended breed, Raven, who additionally has a “twisted” snout from the abuse she suffered in a earlier dwelling.

Whereas it took some warming up, the 2 canines with a novel likeness turned greatest mates.

“They full one another,” Richter says. “They have been undoubtedly meant to be collectively. They’re like yin and yang.”

Richter and her two canines moved to Vancouver Island on the finish of 2024, and the photographer is happy to proceed sharing the optimistic message Brodie sparked as they embark on this new journey.

“The wonder is that Brodie has such a zest for all times, he doesn’t care what he appears to be like like,” she explains. “It’s okay to be imperfect and look completely different. You possibly can nonetheless thrive.”