With a boyfriend of mine at the time, we adopted a rescue pup from a group called ROMP Italian Greyhound Rescue. Winston was half Italian Greyhound and half schnauzer. After that I got heavily involved with volunteering for the rescue and fostering. I later adopted my own Italian Greyhound rescue from the group as did my mom. For ROMP, I did everything including rescue dog photos, making the website, running fundraisers, making videos, social media creation and posts, getting the rescue dogs in published books, streamlining processes, ramping up volunteers and fosters, PR, etc. The internet was continuing to grow and I leveraged my knowledge to help raise money and awareness for them, a skill the others with the group were lacking.
I found out Animal Planet was casting for rescue pups for their Puppy Bowl X. I’ve watched it many times and it just so happened that we recently rescued a pregnant puppy mill mom that gave birth.
As the story goes, ROMP Italian Greyhound Rescue saved a 10 year old puppy mill mama in May 2013. After a few weeks in rescue, Kai (the name we gave the puppy mill survivor) started to look a little plump which confirmed our suspicion that she was pregnant with puppies! We were sad to see her have to care for another litter as that is all she ever did in her 10 years at the puppy mill, but we were glad she was able to do so in our care where we had warmth, good food, vets and lots of love to surround her. Then, on a early summer morning, June 28, 2013 she gave birth to 4 healthy baby boy Italian Greyhound puppies that we named Taser, Sharpie, Crawford and Hossa. Yes, that was the same day the Chicago Blackhawks had their Stanley Cup parade and the Italian Greyhound puppies were named after key NHL Blackhawks hockey players in hopes that they too would find lots of success in their lives. Little did we know how much luck and success these boys would find…
The rescue rarely had puppies, the timing was perfect. I emailed the casting director, provided bios for all the pups as well as a media packet on our rescue group. Shortly after a few more back and forth emails as well as video sends, we found out two of our pups were selected! I was floored. After they were a bit older and it was time to film, we flew with the pups to New York where they filmed the session in a studio in Hell’s Kitchen along with many other pups from rescue groups across the country. Animal Planet provided some promo material so we could help promote it (which helps promote the rescue and other pups). Here are our two Italian Greyhound rescue pups that made the cut!
Rescue: Taser
Age: 12 weeks old
Breed: Italian greyhound
Position: #34 in the starting line up for Puppy Bowl X
Fun Fact: He wants to drink from a fountain in Rome one day…
Rescue: Sharpie
Age: 12 weeks old
Breed: Italian greyhound
Position: #21 in the Puppy Bowl X backups
Fun Fact: Loves to pull all the toilet paper off the roll
Then I lined up a press circuit, a fundraiser viewing party, donations, and more for us, the rescue pups, and their future forever homes which we selected by then. I never did PR work before but with some persistence I got us featured in a handful of TV and radio spots, and few print articles, and a plethora of online articles. It was a fun learning experience for me along the way. They were the first Italian Greyhounds to be in the Puppy Bowl, too! Here are a few highlights that I like.
A few highlight videos:
And a few clips from Puppy Bowl X and filming featuring our rescued Italian Greyhounds!