No Shit-Zu's Allowed (Countdown to Puppy Bowl 3)

One week from today, we'll conclude one week worth of heated competition between Michael Irvin's necktie ("Is that knot the size of a dinner roll or a softball?") and Merril Hoge's necktie ("Is there a cause-effect raltionship between 50-60 concussions sustained during an NFL playing career and one's post-NFL habit of matching a dress shirt with a shower-curtain pattern and a tie with a tablecloth print?") and we'll be down to business.

That's right ... for the puppies who'll slug it out in Puppy Bowl 3 (which airs on Super Sunday at 3 p.m. on Animal Planet), "down to business" sometimes means doing a pee-pee or a poopies on the playing field.
Indeed, if this were a perfect animal planet, we'd use Irvin's tie to mop up a puddle left by a beagle pup before we used Hodgie's shirt as a pooper scooper for the mini pile left behind by a Berner (a.k.a. Bernese Mountain Dog, the longer-coated version of the Swiss Mountain Dog).

You're damn right it's gonna be great. That is, if it's anything like Puppy Bowl 1 and Puppy Bowl 2. What sets the Puppy Bowl apart from the those Eukanuba dog shows you might watch (aside from the fact that they're all rigged) is that appearances by poodles (with their wacked-out, from-outer-space hairstyles) is not allowed.
Look ... no one's bad-mouthing poodles. It's just that poodles -- like the Papillon, the Pekingese and the Pomeranian -- look good only one way.
In the mouth of a Pinscher.

Now, the PBVG (the Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen) ... that's another story.
The PBVG is a quality, small-package, un-yappy dog.

We're probably not going to see a PBVG next Sunday -- in fact, we need to be reminded that the initial scouting reports indicate that the terriers (either a Yorkie or a Jack Russell) could create problems for the retrievers (Labs or Goldens).

Here's an aspect to the game which could be problematic: At halftime of Puppy Bowl 3 (no lie), there'll be a kitty exhibition of some sort.
The only way that sounds appealing is if the kitties are in a scale-size, football-stadium "playpen" (as it were) and if there was a 15-foot python with its game face on at the 50-yard line.

That's the cool thing about a 15-foot python -- the kitties can triple-team it and the kitties are still gonna get sacked (as it were).
It's true -- the only thing better than a kitty in the mouth of Pinscher is a kitty in the tummy of a 15-foot python.
To join the other three kitties already in there.

But, enough of this feline interference. Some of us will be Jonesin' all week to watch the canines get their puppy on. Yes, there exists an anti-puppy movement in America (read: every guy who gets busted on Dateline NBC's "To Catch A Predator" series) which denounces the Puppy Bowls past, present and future, but, that anti-puppy faction has real problems.
Such as goin' on-line w/ what is believed to be 13-year-old girls and typin' rude (stuff) about their sexual dysfunction.

It is amusing how a nation which has no qualms about a veterinarian removing the testicles of a gorgeous-and-lovable puppy's testicles (in what is known as the "neutering" or "spaying" process) can't come to grips with chemical castration for 37-year-olds who are itchin' to do it doggie style with a 13-year-old (boy or girl, it don't matter none to them).

Until that matter is eventually settled one day in an on-line virtual courtroom, we'll let the puppies settle it on the field.

And, when somebody asks, "Who's the winner?", there can be only one answer:

"You are, America ... you are."