Puppy Bowl Archives - i Still Love Dogs

Puppy Bowl XX vs Super Bowl LVIII: Viewing Guide for Dog Lovers

The most exciting game of the year takes place on Sunday, February 11. That’s right, Puppy Bowl is celebrating its 20th anniversary! (Hey, that’s like 140 years in dog years.) Oh, and for Taylor Swift fans, Super Bowl LVIII (that’s 58 in regular numbers) is happening that very same day.

If you’re planning to root for Team Ruff or Team Fluff and the Kansas City Chiefs or the San Francisco 49ers, here’s what to expect for Puppy Bowl—and the dog commercials to look for in that other Bowl.

Puppy Bowl XX

To celebrate its 20th year, Puppy Bowl XX will have the most players ever—131 puppies from 73 shelters and rescues. And hopefully, if it’s like the previous 19 Puppy Bowls, each and every one of those adorable little guys will already be in forever homes by the time the big game airs. Yay!

Puppy Bowl XX also features the following for the first time ever:

Its tiniest competitor, a 1.7-pound Cavapoo (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Toy Poodle mix) named Sweetpea, and its biggest, a 70-pound Great Dane puppy named Levi. (No, these two will definitely not be on the gridiron at the same time.)
Puppies with special needs. Among them are Mr. Bean, a two-legged Papillon, and Riddle, a Pug mix with a neurological condition that causes coordination problems.
An assistant referee, appropriately named Whistle. The Bichon Frise mix just happens to be the foster dog of referee Dan Schachner.
The debut of the Puppy Bowl Hall of Fame, with the induction of four players from previous games.

Puppy Bowl XX airs on Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, Max, and Discovery+ at 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific on February 11. If you miss any of it, there will be reruns on Animal Planet throughout Super Sunday. Go Team Ruff! Go Team Fluff!

Super Bowl LVIII Dog Commercials

Good news: After being inexplicably absent last year, those gorgeous Clydesdales are back in Budweiser’s new “Old School Delivery” commercial. Not only that, but the ad also features an adorable yellow Labrador Retriever who helps the horses deliver beer in a snowstorm! If you want to watch it again and again, here you go.

Tissue (Box) Alert! The “Tails of Hope” commercial for Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y., is filmed from the point of view of therapy dog Hawk, a beautiful Golden Retriever. If this line—”They call me a therapy dog, but honestly I just feel like one lucky pup”—doesn’t make you reach for those tissues, you just ain’t wired right. Here’s a sneak peek in case you don’t want others to see you sobbing.

Swiftie Bowl—er, Super Bowl LVIII kicks off on February 11 at 6:30 p.m. Eastern/3:30 p.m Pacific on CBS.

Photo: Anheuser-Busch

Puppy Bowl or Super Bowl? What to Watch on Super Sunday

Are you as excited as I am about the big game on Sunday, Feb. 13? That’s right, Puppy Bowl is back for its 18th year. If you’re planning to watch that other game with the two-legged players instead (go Rams!) but don’t want to miss out on adorable dogs, look for heartwarming commercials featuring actual and robotic canines.

Here’s a Super Sunday TV viewing guide for us dog lovers.

Puppy Bowl XVIII

More than 100 ridiculously cute puppies from shelters in 33 states will be joining Team Ruff or Team Fluff in Puppy Bowl XVIII. It’s the biggest lineup in the history of this competition.

Among this year’s rather interesting competitors are Wes (Team Fluff), a Chihuahua/Golden Retriever mix (!), Tayce (Team Ruff), a Chihuahua/Siberian Husky mix (!!) and Rob Gonchowski (Team Fluff), a Dachshund/American Pit Bull Terrier mix (!!!).

In addition to their hosting duties, this year Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg will be coaching the furry young athletes. Snoop Dogg, by the way, is also scheduled to perform during the Super Bowl halftime show. He sure gets around! “I’m honored to be co-hosting the only sporting event on the planet guaranteed to raise the ‘woof,’ with the magnificent Martha Stewart!” he says.

No matter which team ends up winning the Lombarky Trophy, all the players are winners, and most have already been adopted into forever homes. But there are plenty of just-as-cute puppies waiting for you at your local shelter! Visit PuppyBowl.com/adopt for information about the shelters and rescue organizations that provided pups for this year’s game.

Puppy Bowl XVIII airs Feb. 13 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time/11 a.m. Pacific Time on Animal Planet. It will also stream on discovery+.

Super Bowl Commercials Featuring Real and Unreal Dogs

Budweiser Brings Back the Puppy

You may remember back in 2015 when Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial featured not only the beautiful Clydesdale horses but also an adorable “lost” puppy. Unfortunately, that ad apparently sold more Kleenex than Bud, so the company announced in 2016 that it was taking a new creative direction and would no longer feature puppies in its commercials.

Seven years later, Budweiser has come to its senses and will once again air a commercial featuring an adorable puppy during this year’s Super Bowl. The spot, titled “A Clydesdale’s Journey,” is directed by Chloé Zhao, who won an Academy Award and many other honors last year for directing “Nomadland.”

In the ad, a Yellow Labrador puppy starts barking when a Clydesdale falls down and is injured after tripping on a barbed-wire fence. After the horse is nursed back to health by a stable hand and veterinary nurse (who also nurse Budweisers, naturally), the puppy and Clydesdale are joyfully reunited.

Grab a tissue or 10: Here’s the 60-second version of the commercial. A shortened 30-second version will air during the Super Bowl.

Kia Introduces a Cute Robot Dog

What’s ~~more~~ as adorable than a real, live dog? An unreal robot dog, maybe?

In the “Robo Dog” commercial for the new, all-electric Kia KV, a robot dog in an electronics store sadly gazes out the window at a man petting a real dog. But then he sees another man unplug his Kia KV from a charging station and gets his artificial hopes up.

As the Bonnie Tyler song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” plays — which seems kind of cruel since robots don’t actually have hearts — Robo Dog chases after the man of his dreams. Its battery begins to die, but never fear: a happy and, uh, electrifying ending is in store.

In the not-too-distant future, could robot dogs become as popular as the real thing? Interestingly, in a TODAY poll asking whether you’d consider owning a robotic pet, the results are equally divided between “Sure, why not?” and “No, there are too many animals in need of homes.” For now at least, my vote is a definite NO.

Instead of piquing interest in robot dogs, Kia is hoping its commercial encourages people to adopt real dogs. In partnership with the Petfinder Foundation, Kia has launched the Robo Dogmented Reality app. By scanning a QR code on a mobile device, users can see Robo Dog in their own homes to get an idea of what having a real pet would be like.

Here’s the commercial. Be sure to give your real dog a hug while you watch it.

Happy Super Sunday!

Photo: discovery plus/YouTube

What to Watch on Super Bowl Weekend If You Love Dogs

If you’re like me, the big game on Feb. 4 isn’t Super Bowl LII, but Puppy Bowl XIV. The good news this year is that there’s another new bowl game with four-legged players to watch, plus a Very Special Episode of the beloved TV series “This Is Us” that may involve a dog.

“Puppy Bowl XIV” — Animal Planet at 3 p.m. EST Sunday.

The 14th edition of Puppy Bowl will feature 90 players — the most in the show’s history. It will be held in a brand-new venue: the bone-shaped Geico stadium. Once again, there’s no real audience, but wouldn’t it be cool if they sold tickets to fans and donated the proceeds to animal rescue groups? Are you listening, Animal Planet?

To recruit the adoptable players, Animal Planet worked with 48 animal shelters and rescue organizations in 25 U.S. states and territories. What’s especially heartwarming this year is that most of the puppies vying for the “Lombarky” trophy are from areas that were devastated by hurricanes last year. For the first time ever, there will also be a player from Villalobos Rescue Center, featured on Animal Planet’s “Pit Bulls and Parolees” series.

Some special-needs puppers will be playing this year, including Ryder, a sight-impaired Husky; Chance, a deaf Dalmatian; Moonshine; a sight-impaired and deaf Border Collie; and Luna, a Pomeranian mix with a cleft palate.

As for other adorable animals, look for Shirley the rescue sloth, who’ll be making her debut as the assistant to returning “rufferee” Dan Schachner.

Check out the Animal Planet website for the complete Team Ruff and Team Fluff lineup.

“Puppy Bowl Presents: The Dog Bowl” — Animal Planet at 8 p.m. EST Saturday.

Sure, all those puppies are ridiculously adorable, but a not-so-cute fact is that older homeless dogs have a much rougher time getting adopted. With this in mind, Animal Planet is debuting “Puppy Bowl Presents: The Dog Bowl” this year, which will feature 50 adult dogs from 15 shelters in 11 states. Their ages range from 2 to 15 years old.

The players will be “going nose to nose for touchdowns, furry fumbles and ultimately the win,” according to Animal Planet. “After the game of tail tugs and ear pulls is over, they all end up winners as they find their forever homes.”

Like “Puppy Bowl,” there will be two teams: Team Wags and Team Tails. The one-hour special will also feature “Dogs Life” profiles of some of the players, as well as NFL player Eric Decker and Jessie James Decker, who run Deckers Dogs, a nonprofit that trains rescue dogs to be to be service dogs for disabled vets; NFL player and animal advocate Logan Ryan; Tia Torres from “Pit Bulls and Parolees”; and Steve Greig, aka @Wolfgang2242 on Instagram, who rescues and cares for senior dogs in need.

The good news is that most of the 50 players have already been adopted, according to USA Today. But hopefully they’ll inspire viewers to look for other older dogs that are still in need of forever homes.

“This Is Us” — NBC after the Super Bowl.

Spoiler alert: If you’ve never watched “This Is Us” but plan to one day, you might want to read no further.

For the rest of us, we know that this episode will finally reveal how Pearson family patriarch Jack died in a house fire. In the last episode that aired, we found out it was an old Crock-Pot that sparked the blaze, which was quickly spreading from the kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms as the episode ended.

Rebecca, Kate and Randall Pearson all survived the fire. (Kevin was away, spending the night at his girlfriend’s house.) So why did Jack die?

Here’s my guess: The family dog was sleeping downstairs. Maybe after everyone was safely out of the house, Kate begged her dad to go back inside and save him. And maybe that’s why, many years later, Kate didn’t want to adopt another dog, because it would stir up all those terrible memories. (Aren’t you glad she changed her mind? That little dog truly is as cute, as Kate said, as cute as Jason Tremblay.)

If that’s the case, Jack truly died a hero. No matter what happens, be sure to have a tissue box or two handy when you watch this episode. And thanks for nothing, NBC, for ending Super Bowl Sunday with a very sad bawlfest.

Photo: Puppy Bowl/Facebook

A Double Treat for Dog Lovers: ‘Dog Bowl’ to Join ‘Puppy Bowl’ in 2018

If you’re like me, the big game you really look forward to every Super Bowl Sunday is “Puppy Bowl” on Animal Planet. Next year, we dog lovers are in for a double treat: To bring attention to older pups who need forever homes, Animal Planet is adding “Dog Bowl” to its game-day lineup.

Like “Puppy Bowl,” the players in the hour-long “Dog Bowl” will be pooches from shelters and rescues across the United States, The Wrap reports.

“‘Puppy Bowl’s’ goal is to promote animal adoption so as many animals as possible can find their forever homes,” Patrice Andrews, general manager of Animal Planet, told The Wrap. The same will be true for the network’s new competition.

“Dog Bowl” will air on Animal Planet prior to “Puppy Bowl XIV,” during the show “Road to Puppy Bowl” hosted by animal advocate and bestselling author Jill Rappaport.

It’s a little early, but mark your 2018 calendars for February 4. In the meantime, enjoy some of the greatest moments in “Puppy Bowl” history.

Photo credit: Coffee

Once Again, Uber Delivers Adoptable Puppies for 15 Minutes of Pure Joy

For the second year in a row, to celebrate the big game this Sunday — yep, Puppy Bowl XII — Uber is teaming up with Animal Planet to deliver adoptable puppies Wednesday in seven U.S. cities.

For $30, Uber drivers and rescue representatives will deliver puppies for 15 minutes of play time during the #UberPuppyBowl event. And that’s not all — the entire $30 is donated to the rescue that supplied the puppies.

Just make sure your boss or building is okay with hosting a quarter-hour of puppy goodness. And be sure to have an enclosed space or a room available in which to play with the puppies.

In the very likely event that you fall in love with one of the puppies, the rescue representative will be happy to get you started on the adoption process. During the debut of #UberPuppyBowl last year, more than 70 of puppies found forever homes (including Pepper Jack, the itty bitty Pittie in the photo above).

Playdates are available Feb. 3 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The participating cities this year are Chicago; Denver; Los Angeles/Orange County; New York; Phoenix; San Francisco/San Jose; and Washington, D.C.

To request a puppy delivery — and do realize the demand will be high, so be very patient — open the Uber app and select the “Puppies” option.

For more information, visit the Uber website.

Photo via Twitter