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Exclusive ‘Puppy Bowl’: Whitney Cummings auditions for four-legged friends
Comedian Whitney Cummings leads puppies rescued by agility tests to compete in the “Puppy Bowl”, Animal Planet’s annual Super Bowl event.
Discovery
Not even a global pandemic can stop teams Ruff and Fluff.
On Super Bowl Sunday, almost six dozen mischievous mongrels will take to the field for the 17th annual “Puppy Bowl” on the new Discovery + streaming and Animal Planet service (2 EST / 11 PST), which selects small dogs for a “game” “fun” of football, the photos of the starting lineup next month will debut exclusively on usatoday.com.
Despite production shutdowns in Hollywood amid concerns over the safety of COVID-19, Animal Planet still managed to hold an even more fur-filled event than before.
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Usually recorded in a cozy Manhattan studio in early October, this year’s “Puppy Bowl” was moved to a hockey arena in upstate Glens Falls, New York, to accommodate social detachment. As a result, the puppies had a much larger field to play on when the game was recorded last fall.
“We are finally filming at a real sporting location, even though we are technically a fake sporting event,” said former “ruffaree” Dan Schachner. “The scale is immense – it looks like a completely different program. It’s a giant size version of ‘Puppy Bowl’, although we have fewer dogs.”
“Puppy Bowl” usually features about 100 dogs, all adopted by the time the show airs on February 7. This year’s game has 70 breeding puppies from 22 shelters, mainly from the Northeast, and not from the country.
“We had to restrict ourselves to shelters a short distance away,” said Erin Wanner, senior vice president of production for Animal Planet. “We also needed to keep the number of puppies lower because all puppies come with shelter representatives, and we were trying to keep the total number of human beings as low as possible.”
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The people on the set wore masks and were tested regularly during filming for a week – a break from the normal recording schedule of one to two days. Production was slower, with fewer employees available to wash toys between outlets and clean up dog poop from the field. But the basic approach had some advantages.
“The biggest thing we noticed is that with fewer toys, there were fewer distractions,” says Schachner. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but it was more like human football. The puppies were focused on a ball or toy instead of 20. Also, they were distant (beforehand) and didn’t really know each other and could socialize from the the way they do in previous years, so maybe that made them more focused when they were on set. ”
The show also increased from two to three hours, with new segments highlighting stories of adoption and puppies available for adoption by local rescue groups across the country.
“Dogs are really the silver lining of this crazy year,” says Schachner. “Adoptions have seen a huge increase in shelters across the country. They can’t keep up with demand.” The New York actor and his family have raised about three dozen dogs, including Bluey, a mix of American Staffordshire terrier / Siberian Husky and Team Ruff player in this year’s bowl.
The promotion is “a wonderful experience,” says Schachner. “This allows us to meet a variety of different dogs, from all backgrounds and experiences, and prepare them for their eternal homes.”