Puppy Bowl IX

I may not be a football fan, but I'm certainly a puppy fan.  This past Sunday was spent visiting family and getting our Puppy Bowl IX on. Harry and I were especially psyched about the puppy line up. Augusta, a plott hound mix, was expected to make an appearance plus Cash, a pit mix, was representing Philadelphia.  Harry and I spotted these pooches using Animal Planet's website, where we also got to see the players before game time in the locker room!

Day of, Harry settled in with a bone and kept an eye on the screen. In the first quarter, two daschund Bassett hound mixes names Harry and Sally made the first plays of the game. Sally scored the first touchdown of puppy bowl nine only a few minutes in!  Harry had a bit of a crush since Sally's teammate was also named Harry...so much in common.

The game slowed down after a few serious plays, but Harry and I stayed entertained by Meep the Bird who was live tweeting and by watching the hedgehog cheerleaders. Puppy bowl did a great job of seamlessly incorporating their sponsors right before the Bissel Kitty Halftime Show. Speaking of sponsors, our favorite puppy bowl commercial has to be the Subaru dog commercial.  We were thrilled by the addition of the cool down tub, enhanced with underwater vision, but not so thrilled with the random screaming by the hicks in Animal Planet's hit shows.  It was too rehearsed.

Our only let down was that throughout all the subs and all the quarter starts, we never saw Augusta!  She was in the very beginning of the bowl when the pups were loading up in a Subaru to get to the game, but she must have sat bench.  Marta won the MVP, Most Valuable Puppy, award for her fierce speed and inexhaustible energy.  Harry would've given her a run for her money. 

Not only is the bowl a huge opportunity for shelters to get their pups on TV and adopted, it's also immensely entertaining...and worth DVR-ing without deleting.  We've already watched it twice.  Although Marta won the 2013 award, Harry will always be my MVP...dawwww.