Stella's Guide to Football Watch Parties

Hi there! It's your pal Stella. Today, Blanche and I are cheering on our favorite team: the New Orleans Saints. That's right, it's football season! We LOVE football season. Football season means parties! Parties means lots of humans come over and eat food! Lots and lots of food! We LOVE food! Food! Food! Food! Food! Food! We love food!  And we love when all the humans get really excited and yell and scream at the TV, because then we get really excited and bark and run around, except for when some of us, ahem, Blanche, get carried away, and runs into the table and knocks all the food to the ground, and we get sent outside and…no more food.

So, while the humans play ruff on the TV, it's important to not knock things over and other tips to make sure everyone has fun:

• Sometimes people might leave food where we can reach, and of course we eat it because we're dogs and we don't have any self control. Have we told you that we love food? Especially hot dogs! And burgers! And shoes! No not shoes... nachos! Mmmmm nachos.... What was I saying? Oh right... last Super Bowl I ate a whole package of hot dogs that someone left where I could reach them. They were delicious, but then I didn't feel so good and the humans weren't happy with me. So it's important that our humans make sure we can only reach food we're supposed to eat.

• Put on a costume! There's no reason why the people on TV should be the only ones having fun wearing awesome outfits. We love to cheer on our team as pirates, lions, or unicorns! Plus, it helps people remember to stop watching and give us belly scratches and treats every once in a while.

• Stay away from loud noises. We hear WAY better than silly people do – we don't understand why they need to turn the TV up so high. Your humans should make sure there's somewhere quiet you can go if the noise gets to be too much.

• Alcohol is a big no-no. Sometimes humans think it's funny to give us sips of their drinks, because we'll try anything – we're dogs! But it's not good for us AT ALL. It tastes gross and it makes our tummies feel awful. So it's important that humans keep their drinks away from us, and clean up their spills before we can get in and help.

• We love it every time the door rings. We can't wait to greet our new visitors with barks, licks, and jumps! Blanche is running in circles just thinking about it! So, it might be a good idea if your human puts you in another room while the guests arrive. And because having so many people over can make us get a bit too worked up, make sure that your human gives you breaks so you can run around outside instead of knocking things over inside like some dogs I know. If you can, get your human to play with you – we LOVE playing fetch with ours during half-time. It helps us relax after greeting so many humans into our house and we get to play just like the people on the TV. I'm always wide retriever, but Blanche likes to be a linebarker.

If you're like us, then football season is one of the best times of the year. Just remember to be good, stay safe, and let the humans pay attention to the TV every once in a while.

Peace & Paws,

Your football friend Stella.