BUFFALO, N.Y. — While the Buffalo Bills were unable to button up the team’s season with a Super Bowl appearance, a special puppy named Button with ties to the team will be in the spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday.
The seven-month-old Boston terrier and beagle mix will be one of 150 puppies to see the spotlight as part of the Puppy Bowl XXII on Animal Planet at 2 p.m. ET. She’ll compete on Team Ruff.
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In addition to competing in the event, Button got some quality time with Bills wide receiver Khalil Shakir at Highmark Stadium.
Her biography for the event describes her as “smart, spirited, and always ready to make a big play,” and it adds that she has “natural talent and eager energy.”
The opportunity came after Button was rescued by Nickel City Canine Rescue, a nonprofit dog rescue in the Buffalo area that Shakir and his Shakir Family Foundation have partnered with many times. Helping rescue dogs and getting them adopted has become Shakir’s passion and an area that he is involved with in the community.
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Button was originally rescued by Valley River Humane Society in Marble, North Carolina, after it received a call that her mother had been shot and found on the side of the road trying to get out a ditch to get back to her puppies. They were about two to three days old at the time. Unfortunately, Button’s mother did not make it, but the puppies survived.
Due to the puppies being so young, they were too small to be fed by bottle, so the staff fed them every two to three hours. The staff at the shelter took shifts to keep the puppies alive.
“It’s a very rural, under-resourced area, but the team there worked tirelessly,” Alyssa Johnson at Nickel City Rescue reported in an email. “They truly are little miracles, and we like to think their mom is looking down, proud of how far Button has come.”
Button then made her way to Buffalo and was part of an adoption event that Shakir and his wife, Sayler, hosted. She has since been adopted but was picked by Khalil and Sayler to be part of a special Puppy Bowl segment and spend the day at the stadium.
