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There are few celebrities who love dogs as much as Dave Bautista. The former wrestler-turned movie star may be a tough guy on screen, but he has a major soft spot for animals in need — and four adorable rescues of his own.
Recently, Bautista told the story about how he came to adopt his pit bull puppy Talulah — with the help of two surprising celebrity pals.
Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on Friday, Bautista revealed that his Guardians of the Galaxy co-star Chris Pratt reached out to him about adopting a pit bull puppy.
“He said, ‘I know you’re a fan of this breed, and my costar is trying to adopt her out,’” Bautista recalled. “And I said, ‘I’m sorry man, you know I’ve already got three.”
However, the Dune star was moved after seeing a photo of the puppy. “I just kept looking at her picture, and I was just… I just fell in love with her.”
Bautista says he reached out to Pratt about adopting the puppy — and discovered that the co-star trying to get the dog adopted was actually Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown!
Brown, 20, is a lover of animals: in addition to having many pets of her own, she frequently posts on social media about animals in need of homes. She co-stars with Pratt in the upcoming film The Electric State.
Bautista said he was in Rome filming a movie at the time, and Brown made arrangements for the dog to be dropped off the day he got home. Bautista said two men showed up “in the middle of the night” to deliver the pup.
“I took her in… she’s been with me ever since,” Bautista said.
The actor showed off his newest addition last year in a Valentine’s Day social media post, showing his newly-adopted “Talulah Batista” alongside his three other rescue dogs.
“Thanks to Millie’s love for rescue animals she made it all possible for me to adopt and give Talulah a forever home!” Bautista wrote. “I’m so grateful, thank you! Welcome to the family Talulah!”
Speaking to Fallon, Bautista says he loves telling the story of Talulah’s adoption — even if it makes him sound like a Hollywood name-dropper.
“I like telling people this story,” he said. “It sounds weird to me when I say, ‘And Chris Pratt hit me up, and I got my dog, you know, from Millie Bobby Brown’… I sound, like, super Hollywood.”
Dave Bautista: rescue dogs
In addition to Talulah, Bautista is the proud dad to three other rescue dogs. While they don’t involve any other Hollywood A-listers, the stories of how they came into his life are still remarkable.
In 2019, a pair of pitbulls were separated when their owner abandoned them — but Bautista adopted them both, allowing them to stay together.
“I needed them, they needed me,” he wrote on Instagram. “These beautiful babies spent the first six years of their lives neglected and abused. And now they are going to spend the rest of their lives being spoiled and loved.”
In 2021, Bautista heard about a dog in the care of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay. The puppy was found mistreated and chained up with a metal chain so tight it embedded into her skin, and Bautista offered an additional $5,000 reward to help them find the culprit.
“To me, there’s nothing more innocent and pure than a puppy,” Bautista said, according to WTSP. “For someone who can abuse a puppy has got to be the lowest form of human being, pure evil, for someone who can abuse an animal like that. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
While it’s not clear if a culprit was ever caught, it did lead to a happy ending: Bautista ended up adopting the dog himself, dubbing her “Penny Bautista.”
Bautista’s co-stars say his love for dogs is apparent even on movie sets.
“He really loves his dogs man,” actor Kumail Nanjiani, who co-starred with Bautista in the comedy film Stuber, recalled to the Tampa Bay Times.
“There are some parts where we were shooting with a dog in a car, and the dog would get overheated and he was just so attuned to it. Dave would be like, ‘We can’t shoot! We have to cool him down!’”
Recently, Bautista showed his compassion for abused and neglected dogs again, offering a $10,000 reward for information about three puppies who were thrown out of a vehicle, resulting in one death.
Dave Bautista definitely loves animals, and we love hearing his stories about how his rescue pit bulls came into his life. Thank you to Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown for uniting Bautista and his sweet dog Talulah!
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