7 Fun Things You Didn’t Know About the Puppy Bowl

Personally, I could not care less about sports if I tried. Name a team, any team, and there’s a good chance I’d need to ask you what they play. To this day, I cannot tell you Travis Kelce's position. Even if I could, I’d still have no clue what he actually does. All of that said, I’m obsessed with the Puppy Bowl.

The Puppy Bowl XXI airs Sunday at 2 p.m. EST on Animal Planet. This year’s game day festivities include 142 adorable dogs, all of which I want to bring home. (No wonder this event has a 100 percent adoption rate.) But how is this “game” actually produced? What’s it actually like behind the scenes? And most importantly, how may poop bags does one Puppy Bowl use? 

To get to the bottom of the cutest event of the year, I spoke with longtime referee (ruff-eree?) Dan Schachner, who gave us the inside scoop on the dogs’ lodgings, mealtime options, and more — plus some details about working with the show’s other animals during interstitials like the Kitty Halftime Show. It turns out, there are more layers to this production than even the fanciest game-day bean dip. 

The puppies all stay at a dog-friendly hotel Upstate New York.

The Puppy Bowl used to film in Manhattan, but during COVID, the team needed more space. Since then, they have filmed the event in an old hockey arena in Glen Falls, New York. When asked where the dogs lodge during the multi-day shoot, Schachner quipped, “They stay with me — all 142 of them, and it’s bliss.” 

In reality, the pups stay in a dog-friendly hotel right next to the area. Although the shoot does not include a doggie craft services table, the Puppy Bowl team does cater to all of the dogs’ specific dietary needs. There is no specific meal break, Schachner says; instead, the dogs’ rescue reps ensure that they eat whenever they need to. 

“They'll be like, ‘Oh, she's tired, or she's hungry, or she’s this…,’ and we don't even question it,” he says. “...Even if the dog's in the middle of something amazing, it's safety and health first. So if they need to eat, they eat whenever they need to. That's up to the rescue. Humans eat at normal meal times.” 

Puppy portraits are rough.

I know what you’re thinking: They’re puppies. How difficult can it be? But here’s the thing: No one’s trained these puppies how to say “cheese.”

Schachner’s dressing room shares a wall with the photo room, so he knows firsthand how hard the show’s pup-arazzi really work. Each photo shoot takes 10 to 20 minutes, which doesn’t sound like much until you remember that this year alone features 142 dogs.

“Getting those shots is really, really hard,” Schachner says. “You want them looking serious and beautiful and cute at the same time.” The wall between his dressing room and the photo studio is thin, and all day, he says, dogs are filtering in and out. At this point, he’s learned to block out the ruckus.

Every now and again, though, Schachner catches a glimpse of the madness. “These photographers, God bless them, are [using] squeaky toys and yelling and whooping and hollering and making all sorts of noises,” he says. “...I'll walk by just to see what's going on, and it just looks like a room full of crazy people.” 

It's not just about poop bags.

You know what they say: Where there are puppies, poop is sure to follow. (Someone says that, right? I’m sure they do.) But just how much do these dogs defecate? Schachner can tell you exactly how much. 

“One year, I was curious myself,” Schachner  says. He asked the showrunner just how many poop bags they use per year. The showrunner referred him to the props person, and eventually, Schachner got his answer. “It wasn't as many as I thought,” he says. Just a casual 300 or so.

It turns out, the demand for pee pads is much higher. Apparently, the production uses about 1,000 of them. That’s got to be enough ammonia to clean half of Manhattan. 

Puppies tend to fall off the stage.

Puppies are a lot like human toddlers; they love to play and explore. Because the Puppy Bowl stage is elevated, this presents a very specific challenge: How do you stop dozens of precocious pups from dive-bombing off the field? 

The show’s crew has toyed with a few remedies for this. In some years, crew members have surrounded the field and used foam presentation boards to create a moving barricade. Then, the team tried plexiglass. “That was a mistake,” according to Schachner. “No one got hurt, but dogs would sometimes walk into it.” The plexiglass was also harder to drill for camera holes, so that remedy lasted only a year or two. 

These days, the powers that be have decided that there’s nothing quite like the human touch. “It's an army of production assistants, volunteers, and interns that are all just like, sat at the edge of the stage, and they just hold their arms out like this,” Schachner says, stretching his arms out as if to gently corral a puppy. “I should take a picture one day of this.” 

Filming the Kitty Halftime Show is “like watching paint dry.”

The segment itself might last for only 15 minutes, but it takes a whole day to film. For Schachner, this shoot is an exercise in patience.

“It's not that it’s not cute, or it doesn't look nice,” Schachner says. It’s more just a lack of action. Much like how the puppies often take five minutes to sniff each other’s butts each time a new canine playmate arrives, the cats don’t tend to jump right into action, either. “They're not sniffing butts,” Schachner clarifies, “but they're just kind of like lying there sometimes.” I say this as a biased dog person, but I suspect that cats are also not super fond of taking direction.

No one’s allowed to touch the birds.

Puppies might be the stars of this event (with a quick assist from the cats), but there’s always a twist or two. Over the years, we’ve had bunnies and Nigerian dwarf goats as cheerleaders; a penguin march; and even a sloth referee. Of all the bonus animals, my personal favorite was Pepper the Parrot, who belted out the national anthem at Puppy Bowl V in 2009. 

Apparently, these guest stars come with their own rules; any creature at the Puppy Bowl who is not a dog or a cat brings their own entourage — or at least a zoo handler. 

“They could have their own documentary,” Schachner says. The handlers come with gloves to safely handle the bird, and for everyone else, it’s hands off. “Similarly, when we had porcupines and sloths and skunks and chickens and hedgehogs, all of which, by the way, have been either cheerleaders or referees, assistant refs, they’ve all had their own special, special handlers, and we are not allowed to interfere.”

An MVP pup forced Dan to change his uniform.

Way back in 2014, a 12-week-old Old English Sheepdog mix hit Schachner with a personal foul that would change the game forever. Or, at least, she changed how Schachner dresses for the game. 

Ginger, the eventual MVP of Puppy Bowl X, yanked down Schachner’s sock mid-game, exposing his bare skin. “It was scandalous,” he says. Apparently, Ginger’s move later inspired her fellow players to join in; before long, it was open season on Schachner’s socks. 

Back when this happened, Schachner recalls, “I was like, ‘They're not going to show this.’ Oh, no. They showed it. They highlighted it. They made it a major point.” Since then, Schachner has switched from knee high socks to long black pants. “It's one thing for them to untie my shoes,” he says, “but when they started disrobing me, it became a little bit [too much].”