Kasey the Keeshond wins World’s Cutest Rescue Dog Contest

Meet Kasey the Keeshond, the winner of the 2019 World’s Cutest Rescue Dog Contest.

Earlier this year, Dog O’Day covered the announcement of the 2019 edition of the World’s Cutest Rescue Dog Contest, and we recently we learned of the winner through People Magazine – Kasey the Keeshond.

A Keeshond (pronounced something like “case in”) is a medium-sized breed of Dutch ancestry, formerly known as the Dutch Barge Dog. which has a double-layered coat.

Kasey is six years old (about 45 in dog years) and she lives in Riverton, New Jersey.

She defeated about seven thousand other entrants to win the grand prize, which includes an appearance on The Today Show, a year’s supply of dog food from Pedigree, and a $1,000 donation to KARMA (Keeshond Affiliated Rescues of the Mid-Atlantic).

Kasey belongs to Sheila and Bob Cosgrove, and she has two human siblings, two feline siblings and two canine siblings.

Sheila has been a part of a Facebook rescue group for nearly a decade, which is how she heard about Kasey’s situation.

“We learned about this puppy mill in upstate New York, where at one time there were over a hundred Keeshonds,” Sheila told People.

Gradually, rescue group members were able to convince the puppy mill operator to surrender the dogs by degrees, which is how the Cosgroves began fostering Kasey in 2016.

“Of course, as soon as we got her, we knew that she wasn’t going to leave us,” Cosgrove said.

Understandably, after four years of awful living conditions, it took a while for Kasey to understand the new rules in this new place, and that not all people were awful – at first she would sleep sitting up, too anxious to lay down.

But since that time she’s become a playful and happy doggo with a soft spot for kids.

That transformation required a lot of patience, though.

“I read up on a lot things about puppy mill dogs and how to help them acclimate to family life,” Cosgrove told People. “They are always going to have something that scares them.”

The runners-up in the 2019 World’s Cutest Rescue Dog Contest were John, a bouncy year-old French Bulldog from North Texas’ Dog Ranch Rescue in Anna with an incurable skin disease,, and Augie, a laid-back Bernese Mountain Dog/Newfoundland mix from Arlington, Massachusetts, who came from Great Dog Rescue New England as a puppy in December 2017.

If you have the time and/or money to help out your local rescue organization or shelter, please do.