Super Sunday is always a special day on Animal Planet, as it was time for the true Winter classic: the 4th annual Puppy Bowl – a video montage of various puppies playing together on a miniature football field, complete with instant replay, a referee, and cameras in the water bowls. The show runs about three hours, but it repeated several times during the day. I know, because I watched Puppy Bowl IV from 11 PM to 3 AM last night (I couldn’t sleep for some reason).

This year’s Puppy Bowl was significant for two reasons – 1: It was broadcast in HD for the first time, allowing you to view the on-field action in stunning clarity, and 2: It will probably go down as one of the grittiest, rough-and-tumble Puppy Bowls of all time, featuring a record three puppies being flagged for penalties and one ejection!

Other Puppy Bowl features included a kitten half-time show (lame again this year) and an MVP award that was voted online by the fans. The voting did see its fair share of controversy – as I felt the Most Valuable Puppy voting was far too influenced by small-dog owners, who everyone knows are shifty and probably voted a dozen times each. Case in point: the clear favorite on the field yesterday, both in stature and dominating performance, was a 44-pound Huskie named Bruin.

But the award ended up going to Jackson, a lousy Westie.

All screw-jobs aside, its important to remember that the Puppy Bowl is not just about competition, its also a clever and fun way to promote dog adoption, and plenty of resources are available on their site: http://animal.discovery.com/tv/puppy-bowl/puppy-bowl.html

I suggest you all check it out. Good luck fighting off your Puppy Bowl Monday hangovers! I know I will!