A School Is Training Its New Team Mascot. It’s a Puppy.

“From there, it’s the weird stuff: running on a basketball court to a rawhide bone,” Krauss said. He had already begun watching Trip during games; over the summer, though, Krauss and Blue will work together in a noiseless, empty arena. Then they’ll start trying to simulate games by pumping in music and adjusting the lights.

“He needs to have a much stronger ability to disengage from distractions since he’s going to be at places with a lot of noise, a lot of people, a lot of smells,” said Nick May, a Bark Tutor trainer. “Any dog can do a sit in a sterile environment with nothing going on; it’s difficult to have a reliable dog when there’s everything going on.”

Indeed, he is still a puppy for now. One evening over the winter, Blue meandered around the training floor at Bark Tutor. He sat. He stayed. He peered at his reflection in the window, and he peed on the floor. He posed for a picture before he was carried back into the night.

Trip was elsewhere, going through the waning months of his tenure and preparing for retirement. There were plans for another adventure to New York, another stop at Madison Square Garden for the Big East tournament, another opportunity for Trip to teach Blue.

Then the pandemic swept across the country. The trip was canceled.

“It was our chance to make one last splash this season,” Kaltenmark wrote in an email on Friday morning. “Instead, we watched from our desk chairs and couches as the season fell apart.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/sports/butler-mascot.html