‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’ Daughter Lyssa Chapman Reacts to Dad Dog’s Engagement

Duane “Dog” Chapman’s fiancée is being welcomed with open arms into the family! After the Dog the Bounty Hunter star announced Monday that he had popped the question to his girlfriend of a few months, Francie Frane, daughter Lyssa Chapman made sure to show her approval for the relationship on social media.

“Welcome to the Fam Fran!” Lyssa wrote alongside a screenshot of her father’s engagement announcement on her Instagram Story. Prior to the engagement, Lyssa had defended her dad’s new relationship to people who thought he had moved on too quickly from late wife Beth Chapman, who died in June 2019 of cancer. “I think that it’s really hard for people to see dad move on. It’s hard for us, it’s hard for the world. Beth and Dog were always together for everything, so it’s been an adjustment period. And I think it’s kind of selfish for people to kind of on-look and say things – even myself,” she told The Sun in April.

“I am not him. I don’t know what he’s personally going through or experiencing. So it’s hard. It’s selfish to put your judgment on someone and say, ‘You didn’t wait long enough, or you should have waited more time or that it’s disrespectful,’” she continued. “I think that’s selfish… you don’t know what someone’s going through.”

Dog and Beth’s daughter, Bonnie Chapman, also has been openly in favor of the engagement: “As usual very thankful for those who are supportive, to those who want to criticize: please just let my father live in peace,” she wrote in a comment on her father’s Instagram page after his announcement. “Let him be happy, please for the love of god let him be. My father has gone through so much this past year without my mother. It’s been extremely difficult to see one parent pass, and the other so intent on following.”

Bonnie added that her father “deserves to be happy,” saying everything he had been through with Beth would be with him forever. “He’ll never forget her and the love she gave him,” she wrote. “She would be happy my father is in love and finding peace. Please keep your comments to yourself, and if you can’t then it reflects more on you than him. Life has never been easy for my dad, but love is something that comes naturally to him.”

“Francie is a wonderful woman, as usual no one can replace my mother; but it’s okay to let new people in,” Bonnie continued. “Life is filled with so much sorrow and hurt, in times like this is when love is found unexpected. For those who claim to know my mother’s wishes: please remember that we as a family went through every excruciating and painful detail of what was next. I had this talk with her, my mother had so much love for my father, she would never want him to be alone. My mom wanted him to be happy no matter what.”

The newly engaged couple has also spoken on their timeline, with Dog telling The Sun Monday alongside his engagement announcement, “You know there’s always going to be haters, and I probably arrested half of them.” Frane, who lost her husband due to cancer just months before Beth, added, “I think too that there’s always going to be people who say we did this wrong or we did that wrong or we’ve moved on too quickly or too fast. But the truth is that both of us have spent three years walking alongside our spouses sick and we know that God brought us together and that’s why we don’t believe that it’s too soon, and because we both have done our share of screaming and crying and asking why. Then for us to come together the way that we did and build this friendship because of what we’ve been through, that turned into a love story. We don’t believe that it’s too soon.”