"THE PUPPY BOWL: MORE THAN A GAME" with Rufferee Dan Schachner

United States, Puerto Rico and the British virtually diamonds, you know what you get? You're going to get the 22nd Annual Puppy Bowl. And today's episode Dan Chackner joins me. He's the Puppy Bowl, Ruffa Reed. Now you hurt me right, Ruffa Reed.

Now the Puppy Bowl began as a Super Bowl counterprogramming way back in 2005 and boy, do we get in to how it's really grown. Now get this.

Close to 15 million people tune in to watch this hilarious smile causing heartwarming show.

From the team names team flop and team Ruff to the MVP, wait a minute, that's the most valuable puppy. The penalties like excessive snoozing and trash barking to the winning trophy, the Lombarkey trophy, but it's so much more though, all the animal participants are from shelters and 100% get adopted, that's right, 100%.

Now brings awareness to all the participating shelters, but really, it brings awareness to shelters just in general. This year, they have a record 15 special needs dogs, they have a player combine before the game and in half time, they bring in the senior dogs, now can you guess what that's called, how about the oldies and the goldies?

In this 15 year, Dan has been bringing the humor and the fun to the ball. Now you're going to find yourself holling with laughter with this and I promise you, if

“you've seen the Puppy Bowl, are you just finding out about it?”

This episode will have your tails wagging for a lot more.

It really is a special treat. For real, for real, for real, for real, for real, for real, for real, for real, for real, got a bunch of furry friends and I love them all to say, I'm an animal of a veterinarian is the name, they share some pastories from heartwarming strays, houses and games from wacky to insane for real.

You are now tuned in to Frio, with your host, Mark Kyle. Welcome back to the Frio podcast. Today, my guest, it's one of my favorite shows and one of my big fan, please welcome the rougherie, Dan Schakner of the Puppy Bowl, Dan, thank you so much for joining. Yeah, happy to be here, Mark, thanks for having me.

Well, yeah, truthfully, for my listeners and the people who listen, they're big animal people and if they don't, we'll get into what exactly the Puppy Bowl is, but I've been a fan for a long time and the fact that you're on here, that only a fan of this show, but I'm a fan of you, so I'm really, really glad you're here. Thank you, but appreciate it.

It's nice to have fans. Yeah, well, yeah, I wish I had some anyways, but let's talk about you before we get into what the Puppy Bowl is. And now let's talk a little bit about you, how you, I know you're in sports for a while and doing all this stuff, because you've been doing this for a long time, but let's talk about

you, so everybody knows you before the rougherie and then go from there and we'll get into the Puppy Bowl. Oh, sure. There's my 15th year with Puppy Bowl, so I'm really proud of that milestone. So I've seen it from, oh man, when we only had 50 dogs going at a time to now this record

breaking amount of 150 dogs per game, so it's been really inspiring to see how the Puppy Bowl has grown over the years. And the animal planet knew me and hired me because they were looking for somebody to be, I guess, more of a permanent ref and someone who would be also a spokesperson for these dogs who need voices, and so they can get adopted.

And that's how it came about. They had known me as a broadcaster. I had hosted some sports trivia shows and I also hosted some pet shows for animal planet the network in previous years.

“And that's, you know, that's how it worked out.”

I put out an audition tape, because of course there's no blueprint for how to do this job. And as I created a tape, sent it in, and here we are. Well, I think you created a blueprint. And you're the one that's really made to show what it is without personality doesn't happen. But let's go a little bit farther back.

Have you been an animal person in your life? I know you're a big person in adoption now. Let's talk a little bit about you and then we'll dig into the show and really let everybody know how great it is. Oh, thanks.

Yeah. Now, I grew up around dogs, mostly Docsons, my whole family from the time that my family is originally

from South America and Docsons have always been a part of their family and my family.

Growing up, and then when I went to college, of course, there were no dogs and in first few years in New York, there were no dogs as I was kind of making my way.

“But as soon as my, I remember my building, there was a landmark day finally started allowing”

dogs. I lived in Manhattan at the time. And some buildings were pretty restrictive with their animal policy, but there was a, they lifted it, because they realized that people simply didn't want to live in buildings

Right. And I thought that was a good sign.

“And then I started fostering and fostered for 10 years.”

Let's see.

My first, basically, for not quite first 10 years of puppy bull.

Maybe after three years, I started fostering puppy bull, yeah, around puppy bull 11. And after 10 years, I did finally adopt a dog from puppy bull. And that was a pretty landmark moment, too. Well, I read about your dog whistles at your dog we're talking about. Yeah, formerly whistle, which was an appropriate name for puppy bull.

I know a sense of great name. I was going to tell you. I love the name. We loved it. But now we realized maybe better for her as a stage name.

And since she retired from the game, she hung up her her whistle, hung up her cleats. So to speak, she, she's now called Poppy, P.A.P.A. Oh, okay. Oh, well, that would be South America, for sure. I guess exactly.

We'll not to the heritage. So it's good stuff. So you know the whole story about doxions, too, that they've erased the hunt like badgers and things like that.

They're like, you never realized I'm a new scene, but they were like, they're hunting dogs.

They're hunting dogs. So many of the dogs had been bred for either hunting or retrieving of some sort. You know, there's some sort of like hunting or hunting adjacent job. I found out recently, my dog is across between a toy poodle and a bee jump. But I found that the poodles originally, many, many, many years ago were bred in Germany.

I guess it is a German word for puddle and meant to go into puddles after dox had been shot and just sort of retrieves them from the puddles and bring them back.

“And that's how the name poodle came about.”

Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool. Me neither, not until recently. I just found out that out. Okay, so let's talk about the puppy bull.

Let's talk about the beginning because I know originally was like a montage and stuff like that. So let's let's talk about run the beginnings and then let's kind of, you know, walk our way through to step the steps to where they are today because what you're doing this year with what I've

read and we haven't had a chance to talk about it, it's pretty amazing.

So let's just kind of go from day one to, you know, to what we're doing now, what, what did an amazing thing you guys are doing? Okay, so we're looking into the origin story of puppy bull, which is really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you know, 20, we're 22 now, so 22 years ago.

The Super Bowl was the only game in town on Super Bowl Sunday, rightfully so America gathered for the TV. It was a highest rate of thing on TV that day and the idea or the notion of, quote, counter programming was just a really, really very distant in most people's minds, an executive at Animal Planet decided, well, look, we have nothing to lose, no one's really watching

much TV anyway. Let's just take a camera and put it on a small little green pan of dogs, make it look like a small mini football field. Right. Let's have the dogs be adoptable.

So there's a feel good aspect to it. But if you go back in the archives to puppy bull one, I'm sure it's out there on YouTube. You'll see how rough we were pun intended, I guess, at that initial onset, you know, again, it was just a couple of cameras, wasn't very official, looking there weren't many brands involved and they didn't expect much out of it.

But if you came a surprise hit because people actually did tune in that day. Next year they tried it, made it a little bigger, a little better and every year got better and every year we put on more brands, got bigger, more dogs, got a bigger roster going, added new elements, more cameras and by the time I joined in puppy bull eight, it was really

“an institution and I think in some ways one of the original forms of counter programming”

out there. It gave people something else to watch, you know, not everybody on Super Bowl Sunday is a football fan, especially if you don't have a team in the game. Right. He walks in paths, if you're not from the Boston area, the Seattle area, either goes.

You might not have that much invested in the outcome, but puppy bull something that everybody get that get behind, we air a couple hours before the Super Bowl, so families, if they're getting together, you know, have something to watch that afternoon. And as I said, I joined in puppy bull eight, it had already been really brought into the spotlight at that point and we just helped grow it bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing

year. Well, it's funny as I have a matter of fact, I saw a friend this morning in a coffee shop. He's a sea ox fan, he's from Seattle, but he's a huge animal guy too, so he flips back and forth. You're watching both, even wants to be in a sea ox fan.

Yeah, you go watch them at the same time or you can watch us before we are at 2 p.m. Eastern. So, you know, you don't have to miss that other game. This can be just a three hour pregame, right? Especially, you know, it's a way to get kids excited that day to again, if they're not

that invested in the football part of it, I know my two boys, early years, it was all about the puppies for them. So let's talk about them. But by the way, and we've already kind of done it with the rough in all that kind of stuff too. What I love people that have a plan name, obviously, the for real podcast is the same

idea, right? It's some level. Love it. So, you guys, I got, I can only imagine what the creative team is doing all the time,

go weird and a good meaning, a good thing.

“But let's talk about everything, because you guys this year, in particular, are doing”

you have a pregame deal, which is a combined in that. Let's talk all about that. And then I want to get into some of the old stories and how you guys do everything.

I mean, you know, for the people who are listening that may have never seen it, we want

to make sure that they are going to find it to share and listen to it. So let's let everybody know all the cool stuff. Oh, sure. Yeah, well, we're hard to miss because we're on several networks, streaming on HBO, we're on Discovery Plus, we're on Animal Planet, Discovery TBS, True TV, and again, it is,

it is a little hard to miss, and the social, all over social media. So if you're a pet fan of any kind, come Super Bowl Sunday, you're going to see some puppy bull related content. We are, as I said, 2 PM Eastern on Animal Planet, 11 AM Pacific, and there is a pregame show.

We started doing years ago, but we've really taken it up a notch the last couple of years because instead of just a preview of what we're about to see, we got some action. We are going to actually draft the final 10 players on the roster. So as I said, we have 150 dog roster this year, split between two squads, bigger server. Yeah, and then that puppy bull pregame will be essentially a combine where we'll see a

skills test of hopeful dogs, and then the final draft of the final 10 in the last portion of the pregame. So it is a pregame, but it's many, many more things than that. And once the game begins, it's action from beginning to end. Not to mention we have, we try to fit in as many different adoptable dogs as possible.

So not all of them make it onto the field simply because not all of them are playing, there's a lot of players benched. Again, not because we want them to be benched, but because they choose to sit there sometime. Yeah.

So we try to, you know, highlight and feature as many as possible. And we'll be right back.

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“going to tell you that I think it's a funny story, at least from my perspective.”

The two teams we have, yeah, are team rough and team fluff, right? That's something that we started putting together about 11 years ago when we started keeping score. So they're all really clever names, so I'm going to, my daughter's going to kill me. And my daughter, when she was growing up, because team rough has a dog on there that's

Miss Coco. Right.

And my daughter's, my daughter's real name is Cody, but when she was young, she always

wanted to be Coco, fluff, bomb bond. So now I'm going to have to team, because Coco's on team rough, right? So I'm going to have to call her Coco, rough, bomb bond now, but I'm reading this thing. Oh, my God, it's my daughter all over again. It is.

Coco, rough. What was it? Coco, fluff, bomb, you said? Bomb bond, yeah, but she made it up herself, but you know, she would probably five or six of the time.

So we'll listen. That's a fantastic name for a dog. Yeah, of any dog next year, we should just steal part of that. That's great. Yeah, bomb bond.

Coco, well, now it's Coco rough, because it has team rough now too. It is rough this year. Yeah, it would be really rough this year. Anyways, but I want to talk a little bit about your format. I want to get into all the different things, but you work with a bunch of shelters.

Yeah, I mean, you guys do an amazing thing. And so let's talk a little, you know, it's funny. I saw that, you know, and you're also on the US Puerto Rico and BDI. Yep.

“And I'm guessing with Puerto Rico you're working with the Saddle Project probably?”

Yes, we work in Saddle. Very closely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that. How do you find the shelters you work with and that and how do you before you have

the combine? Yeah. How does it work? Sure, because a lot of the pubs, as you're looting to and you're right, are chosen before the game, not just in the final moment.

Right. The way it works with shelters, again, just like our puppy rosters, the amount of shelters we work with every year, grows and grows. We're up to 72 shelters across the US Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands this year. 72.

It's amazing. And the way we find them well, we have groups like the Saddle Project that we work with year after year and are very dependable and we like having the aspect of Puerto

But we also don't have a hard time finding volunteers. Often, rescues will reach out to us and say, hey, anyway, I could get involved in pub people. Let me know because every rescue that we work with. This is verified reports a tremendous uptick in adoption increase once they have a dog featured on pub.

It's a little bit of credit that it adds, I guess, to the rescue or to that litter.

We've never been away by the way.

“Yeah, I think so too, they all deserve a push.”

So we're trying to include as many different dogs and rescues as possible. So they'll come to us for new faces. And really, it's not anything complicated. They need to send a dog when it comes time to shooting puppy bull. They need to be between, let's see, three and six months of age.

They're basic shots in, pass the vet check. They need to be untrained because we want the untrained dogs. Not the, not the show dogs, of course. And they should be cute and show quite a variety of adoptable dogs because another part of our mission is to explain to people out there who maybe little hesitant about adopting

from a shelter. Oh, I can't find a pure breed or I can't find that perfect little doodle mix that I want. Oh, no, no, no. There are plenty of those types of dogs for adoption. So again, we're trying to showcase as many different kinds.

We've got the good olomeric in muts of indeterminate origin, but we've also got the golden doodles and bulldogs and all the way down the line. Great Danes, Huskies, they're all there. Well, also, I read that you guys this year are the half time we're doing the oldies and the goldies.

Yes, we're talking about the senior guys too.

“And I think there's a great addition by the way, free what your guys are doing.”

I think it's really because they need, they need representation too. They need even more representation than the puppies because puppies as you know are the first to get adopted in any any shelter situation or rescue situation. And the dogs parents are often the ones who are languishing there a lot longer.

So we always had some senior element.

For almost as long as I've been involved, there's been some, you know, we've been trying to include senior dogs in there and that has grown and grown. But this year, I'm really excited. We're proud to say we have the first ever pro dog bowl half time exhibition game, which will be, yeah.

And half time, an exhibition game of senior dogs, adult dogs. And we've broken them down into two groups, the oldies and the goldies. And they are going to play a mini football game. So this year, you're getting two bowls for the price of one. Two bowls for the price of one.

And then I'll see you do stuff with special needs stocks too. And let's talk about them. I'm going to make you get everything out of here because I want everybody to listen if they haven't seen it. You're going to realize what I have this will warm your heart.

Oh, yeah. It's huge. And I thank you for including all the elements because we're very proud of them. Yeah, she should be. Let's see.

Special needs are, we just spoke about how adult dogs and senior dogs take a lot longer to get a doctor. And if our mission is to adopt mall, get as many out there as possible.

“We have to always remember that the spotlight needs to move from the pups to the pups”

parents to the pups that may not look like a normal pup or act like a normal pup, pups with either some physical deformity or perhaps they have a hearing impairment or a vision impairment or they're missing a leg. We've got Tegan this year who's in a wheelchair. We've got a little leechie who's missing sadly in an ear.

But the idea is we have to show that special needs dogs can play as well as success fully as any quote, able-bodied dog that is out there. Again, because special needs dogs are the ones that and much like seniors have a hard time getting adopted. So this year we have a record amount of special needs dogs 15 and they're from all over

the country. And they are yes, they're participating in the game just like anyone else. You'll see three leg-a-dog named Winona, Tegan who I mentioned. There's so many different groups. They actually have a little bit of a record now or I should say a reputation of

performing very well at Puppy Bowl.

In Puppy Bowl 15, we crowned our first ever MVP that happened to be a special needs dog,

Bumble, and Bumble was sight and hearing impaired and believe it or not, because MVP is a very simple category. You've just scored the most touch-downs. That's it. You win, right?

And Bumble scored an inordinate amount of touch-downs. And then it happened again in Puppy Bowl, let's see, 20, I think, with mousse, another dog. So we've had two special needs dogs made MVP in our years, so we're really proud of that or I should say proud of them and hopefully getting the right message. And let's still everybody wet MVP, really stands for for you guys?

Oh yeah, most valuable pup. Yes, sir. Yeah, I love that. And prior to scorekeeping in Puppy Bowl 11, the Puppy Bowl's won through ten. All we did was award a most valuable pup.

with the big score board.

“We simply, you know, the pup that scored the most touch-downs didn't matter the team, didn't”

matter anything, was crown the MVP and that was it. But now there's a big award ceremony, we have special categories, we have the underdog award for the dog that maybe didn't perform as well as the others, but had a great spirit, was real cute and America loved them, so they received an award and it goes on and on like that.

And by the way, underdog, most valuable puppy, all players and words, so let's talk about the game, tell people how they score, how it works and all that kind of stuff, too. If you've seen it, you'll know it, but if you haven't seen it for you guys who are listening, this is why you're going to watch it, we're going to talk a little bit about that. You're going to see Puppy scoring touchdowns in ways that you didn't even think

possible. The way that Puppy Bowl is unlike human football is that it's, let's say, more free form. Instead of one ball in the, well, let's break it down from the beginning, the field is about, I'd say 20 feet across, maybe 25 feet, not that big, and it's about 10 feet wide.

And we don't have more than usually, I would say 12, 12, yeah, dogs on the field at one time.

“We do rotate them in, we have a big wide bench, huge roasters, as you know, 75 per team.”

So we try to get in as many different groups as possible.

And we start with, in the first quarter, smaller dogs, you've got your two-wallas, your

doxies, et cetera, and then we work our way up through the quarter. So by the time you get to the fourth quarter, you're going to get your huskies, your great dains, your sheep dogs, again, still in Puppy form, but they're much bigger, and we can't have them mixing with the smaller groups. So we try to, um, try to break it down like that.

And the objective, of course, is to score a touchdown. How to do it? Really? It doesn't matter. We don't care if the ball is kicked, if it's pushed over with the nose, if it's carried

in, if it's accidentally swiped by the tail, by the way, all four of those things that I described have happened and have been official touchdowns in Puppy bowl, and we keep score that way. And it requires several cameras, several people in the control room to catch all the action, replays, all of that.

Um, yeah, that's that. Those are the rules.

“There's not much else beyond that in the penalties.”

So let's talk about some of the camera setups, because you've got some pretty fun camera setups, too. The water bowl wine, you start a water bowl wine from yeah, from the beginning.

We've always had a water bowl on this center of the field, not quite at the center of the

40 yard line, I think. And it's a water bowl that's embedded into the field. We have a camera right underneath it. So we don't miss a little bit of action, not even a minute of action. And I will call penalties if a dog stays in there too long.

We call a liquid loitering or illegal bathing or excessive hydration depends on the severity. Yeah, and the severity. So let's talk about that, that leads me right into the penalties, because you've got some amazing penalties. There's a lot of penalties out there.

Yes, and that list is ever growing. Um, when I, when I first started, I was like, well, there's a lot of pause interference, simple one, right? An easy pun, real counterpart in human football, no brainer. But then pause interference became more complicated than it was roughing the pepper,

than it was pancake. When dogs kind of stomp all over one another, there was end zone zoomies. It was invasive sniffing. There was a false, a false bark instead of false start. Unsports been like digging, terrorizing the ref. That's when one dog ripped off my sock and exposed my bare skin to America.

It was a very controversial moment. And let's see what else. Oh, illegal mapping happens more often than you'd think. You know, there are dogs who are literally in the middle of a play, but we'll decide to lie down in fallacy.

I had a dog this year that fell asleep as I was issuing a penalty to the dog. Literally had the dog in my hands telling them that they're going to be set back. Five yards for, you know, roughing the pepper and dog fell asleep. So these things do happen.

There's always some some penalties that have, as I said, counterparts in human

football, they might have neutral zone infraction. We have neutral bone infraction, things like that. But then there are dog, there are penalties that are exclusive only to dogs. As I said, you know, you're not going to see a legal bathing on the NFL, but you will unpopular.

So let's talk about behind the scenes a little bit because some of, I mean, to coordinate this stuff and to really make it happen, because I mean, you've got, you've got a couple hours to do it, but there's a lot of dogs and there's stuff happening so quickly. What's some of the crazy things that happen behind the scenes that people don't see on the screen or even on the screen?

It truly takes a village. There are, I would say, at least when you factor in all the shelter reps and come from across the country, because all these dogs have their people that bring them over to transport them, their handlers. When you factor in the, the press, people, the production people, the lighting, all of it.

upstate New York that we transform into the public old stadium.

We number, near 100. Wow.

“In fact, that might be too low of an estimate, but I would say we're around 100 people”

to create the puppy bull takes a week. It's not shot in, you know, in one day and certainly not in real time, because again, we have so many elements and we're so much, we're trying to fulfill that mission of getting them all adopted. So again, trying to showcase as many different groups as possible.

As I mentioned, we have the pregame, we have promos throughout, we have commercials, we have things called adoptables, which are 12 segments that are that are interspersed throughout the puppy bull. They give you a little backstory on dogs that might need a forever home, learn more about the shelter, that kind of thing.

So yeah, it's, it's a huge undertaking. And you guys get a lot of kind of celebrity guests that show up each year, too, to a big, big proponents of the doping, who are some of the big guests coming in this year. Is it a surprise?

“Well, man, I'm not, there's a few that I'm not allowed to talk about because they're still”

like TBD, like they're there on, but I don't know how much is approved. So I'm going to, uh, plead the fifth there because I would say stay tuned, not because I'm being an uncooperative, but because I've been told to wait. It's nice to have a surprise. Well, let's go back a few years of other people that have shown up.

How about that? Yeah, Michelle Obama would call the puppy bull 10 for us. The intro person for us, uh, newscasters, people like Brian Williams, all, we've had celebrities from, um, the puppy world itself, uh, marney, the pug, et cetera, things like that.

You know, pup influencers. So, uh, you know, that to mention the stuff that we do that's sort of part of our puppy bull outreach. I guess you'd call it when we go to shows across the country and promote puppy bull. They've been on the today show, they've been on you name it CBS morning, you know, every

morning show out there, um, you know, the juve very more show, the Kelly Clarkson show, uh, we try to get our pups out there and get him as, you know, visible as possible. Well, you know, the cool thing about it is, and for you guys that are listening to

haven't seen this thing, first of all, one of the reasons I'm trying to tell you this

because I want you to listen and watch it, I mean, and the cool thing is that there's a bigger thing here, you're trying to find home for these animals and you're giving not only entertaining people with obviously their funny and the, the impuppies are cute and old dogs are cute too, but you're also doing a bigger thing and finding homes for the obvious animals, which is, it's kind of nice that you're being able to do both.

It is nice to be able to do it. It's, it's very easy to get adoptable, adorable, untrained puppies who are on national TV to find a home. That's not the challenge, right? The challenge is the shelter that brought that group in, um, is a nonprofit that, you know, is having a tough year and maybe they've been hit in previous years from say COVID or maybe they've got an influx that they can't handle

and they need all the help and publicity they can get. Right. Um, getting those, those names on the map on people's radars, especially with social media and what that provides is a tremendous help. It is as helpful as if you were to, you know, provide them a giant donation or take some dog, for them, the publicity that we, we are able to provide for them, the spotlight to use

“that word again that we're shining on them is what's so important. Uh, we have 100% adoption”

rate by the time puppy bull ends airing each and every year. Wow. They all get adopted. Again, it's not hard to get the puppies adopted. It's much harder to get the seniors and the special needs dogs, any adult dogs. The litter, every puppy, we say this too. If you're watching puppy bull and you see a dog from say green dogs unleashed, which is one of our shelters that we work with in Virginia, they have amazing dogs. And you call up that shelter because you fall in

a love of that dog and that, but unfortunately, because again, millions are watching every year. Right. That dog's been adopted. Chances are that dog is part of a litter. So that shelter will have siblings of that dog that look similar, Accimilar to that. So we're trying to point people to their local shelters and get them involved in adoption it. Anyway, they can. And if they can adopt, they can foster, they can donate, they can advocate. There's a lot of messages

that we put out there that can keep people involved and helping dogs, which is our mission. Well, the other thing is, too, is even if those dogs aren't available, there may be somebody just watching because they love animals, but it may maybe encourage them to go out and get a dog, too, that means a home, which is also cool. Absolutely. Again, you can't,

dog may not be right for everybody at every moment in their life. Maybe you'll never have a dog.

That's okay. But if you can help get the word out, like you said, if you've got a friend, a family member, who might benefit from that, it's something to consider. Again, we've had so many people that come give us so much support over the years and report back to us after we're saying,

you know, it brought us the people that end the donations that we needed over time. So yeah, very proud of that. Well, you know, what most people don't realize when you're in whatever

town you, there's always a big shelter, but there's these other smaller shelters with people

just big harks that are trying to help these animals do that. And they're on a very limited budget. And when you're bringing awareness to it, you're really, really doing a good thing. So, you know, again, you know, when I reached out to you and you're in the factory, you wanted you were willing to be on the show for me. It means a lot to me. But I also want to get

“to message after because I think it's a really important message. It's why I keep coming back every”

year because it's one of the most rewarding jobs you can ever have. I mean, yes, it's, of course, it's fun where we're making up new penalties as we go, finding out different ways to say every time a dog piece, you got to, you can't just call everything a spot fell. You've got to think, think, go on the 20, you know, legal watering of the lawn, find different human rhythms. Those are all fun and great and creative. And I love how the game keeps it's spending and we find

different ways to celebrate dogs and football. But the biggest part of it is watching the end of the show, how every dog gets picked up and brought to a new forever home. And to stock

them afterwards on Instagram. That's always fun and see their new life. Oh, yeah, that's true, especially

for you, you get to know them so well, too. And I'd love some of the names. So when I sold them a lot, loves to lay. Lobster. Oh, yeah, I'd be revisable dog. She's a bulldog on team rough. Yeah, but the names are cool. Brulet, lobster roll. I mean, I love the names. Brulet is a French. We've got Benito, who was named after, uh, of course, bed bunny, who was performing in the Super Bowl half-time show. We've got our own bed bunny named Benito and he'll be

on team fluff. And we've got dogs that are named after NFL stars as a tribute to our human counterparts. They have Josh Allen. We have Josh Howlin. They have Baker Mayfield. We have Barker Mayfield. You get the picture. Who will, you know, Baker Mayfield. So I'm in Austin. That's for Baker's from here. Oh, yes. Yes. He went to my daughter. He was a two years younger than my daughter. So, I mean, my daughter went with his brother was a friend of my daughter. So, very cool. Very cool. Hopefully,

he'll translate to some tickets for you guys down the line. Hi. Well, we'll see about that one. But anyways, let's talk about for everybody again. I know you mentioned early on. I know you're on a variety of different things. Let's go back through the list of where people want to watch it. We're how they can find that. Oh, sure. I know you're on social media. All that

“stuff. So people can find everything. Yeah. If you want to follow my adventures. This is my,”

I guess my most active time of the year. I'm all over promoting puppy bull. And you can follow me at the puppy bull ref on Instagram. Very easy find. I should come right up when you search the

puppy bull ref as far as the show, which is most important. We want everyone to tune in animal planet

or discovery or streaming on max, TBS, true TV at 2 PM Eastern, 11 AM Pacific on Sunday, February, the 8th. Right. And also, though, you can have a pre-game thing too. So there's good. If for people who want to see some of that stuff too, that'll be available too. But the game, want to go on a car. Okay, cool. Now, like I had mentioned to you, I always do a really silly animal joke at the end of every episode. I'd love to hear it. No, you're, you're, this is going to be

last time you say I love to hear it. But I made one specifically to relate to you. Okay. And so by the way, if you guys didn't catch it earlier, I wasn't saying referee. I was saying referee. And dance the referee by the way the play in names. So here's my joke for you. What's kind of a joke? Okay. Why is the referee so popular with the players? Um, I give up because he always hands out, treat sized penalties. They wish. Yeah, they wish exactly. Anyway, man, I just want to thank you so much for

being on the show. I know you're, I mean, you're, you're doing it next week. So it's coming up. And you took the time. I'm just really, really feel privileged to have you. I am a big fan of you. And I'm a big fan of the show. So I really appreciate it. Oh, man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Since you're into bad jokes, I got several in my arsenal. May I share one? Oh, good. Let's go.

“All right. What is a dog's favorite football position? I don't know. What is it?”

With some thought I bet you'd get this if you like bad jokes. The golden retriever. Oh, I like it. I'm sure I have one for you. What do you call a dog or likes to race? Not a gray-hound. Speed them in. I don't know. What do you got? A lap dog. A lap dog. That's good. Anyways, I'm going to let you go. But for everybody else that there's out there listening, please keep listening. By the way, if you're hearing this show, we're, you know, we're, we're airiness. So on Tuesday

before it comes, the show comes out. Pass the word, wash the show, adopt the dogs, do all the things, become a huge fan, follow Dan on his, the puppy bull rath. All that kind of stuff. But most importantly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening for real.

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