Puppy Bowl Behind The Scenes: Piglet Pep Squad
For the first time ever, a Piglet Pep Squad will take to the field during Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. BuzzFeed was granted backstage access and got to hang out with piglet stars Bubbles, Hank, Beulah, Khalessa and Othello, which was way cuter than we were prepared for. posted
When we entered the Piglet Green Room we found Hank, Beulah, Khalessa and Othello hanging out in a pen. They came to Midtown Manhattan all the way from Ross Mill Farm in Pennsylvania, but were totally calm about the whole thing.
I asked the handler if I could get in the cage with them and she said "Sure, just be careful that they don't bite you." Eek!
Potential biting aside, look how cute that face is!
This is Bubbles, the star of the show and Ambassador for Ross Mill Farm.
Bubbles was super smart and very friendly. At one point she wanted to come visit me, but I was on the other side of the cage. If she had gone straight at me, she would have been trapped in the cage but instead she looked at the situation and walked around the enclosure to ask me for ear scratches. Would a puppy know to do that?
It was right about here that we all started to feel guilty about eating pork.
For scale.
Gavon and Bubbles became good friends—he only made a few bacon jokes out of respect.
It was cold in the Piglet Green Room, so Bubbles found a warm place to snuggle. The official term for this is Bubbles Snuggles.
Bubbles is not only the Ambassador of the piglet farm, but also the household pet of Susan, the handler.
Susan said Bubbles is more social than most piglets and has a special place in her heart. Bubbles even gets to sleep in her bed like a puppy!
The piglets eventually took to the field.
The crew was all ready to film the piglets playing with the footballs.
They didn't give two woops about the little footballs, though.
This was probably the most interest a piglet showed the footballs during the taping.
Susan had a few treats up her sleeve, though, and got the piglets moving around the field with Cheerios.
The crew wanted to get shots of piglets with their snouts in the air, so Susan held Cheerios above them.
It'll be interesting to see how the film crew edits together clips without any Cheerios in the shots, because the field was littered with them.
At one point the piglets tried to eat the pom poms, so the American Humane Society's Animal Safety Representative pulled the pom poms off the field.
This is the Animal Safety Representative (left) luring the piglets into their crate. The representatives are hired whenever any animals are used in a production, to make sure none of them are harmed or treated unethically.
Bubbles got to stay on the field for some close-ups.
A majority of the time was spent trying to get her to make "piggy noises" that Animal Planet could dub over the segment. Holding treats above her head and later cuddling her did the trick.
There were a lot of Cheerios harmed in the production of the Piglet Pep Squad.
Work it, girl.
Want to get a Bubbles of your own? Check out Ross Mill Farm's info for Getting A Pet Pig.
Photos by Amy Sly
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