Yup, its the Pup World Cup.
Our little Scruffy dog has taken the initiative and teamed up all his doggy mates to form a team for football and rugby. Right now he's got 11 players for footy and 15 players for rugger.
In a recent and rare interview with Scruffy, (pictured below)
he told us how he'd put his team together. The interview came about as part of our first instalment of sports writing for our new monthly trade and retail magazine, 'The Creature Feature.'
The Creature Feature lets you know all the latest news and what all the animals are up to. The latest headlines, gossip columns, new animals and the rising stars and who is dating who. There's a classified section, sports and interviews , homewares and gifts section and much more.
So Scruffy told his story through a visual intepretation which consisted of lots of tail wagging, yapping, whining, paw scratching and running around in ever decreasing circles.
We basically had to figure out what he was trying to say.
But it all became very evident when we met all his other doggy friends and they all began chasing his ball.
At first it was total chaos in the park and there were fights and arguments over whose ball it was. But they all eventually settled down and realised they were better when they formed a team and worked together.
All the dogs in the team are a mixture of abilities, breeds and Heinz 57 varieties and all come in different shapes and sizes.
For rugby it was easy for Scruffy to put his squad together and we can see from one of the card designs where he's placed them on the field. The heavier and bigger dogs are the forwards and the little faster ones are the backs.
For football there is less information available and little understanding of tactical positions, but we gather the team are made up of more expensive dogs and ones who are a little more precious.
Anyhow the long and short of it is there is a team in the making . So Scruffy as their star player, coach and manager wants to get them all playing in their first World cup.
So we thought we'd ask all our customers for some ideas and maybe we could form some new teams in different team colours and nationalities and bring them all together for a world cup match. What we need are some more types of dogs, breeds and non breeds to make it more fun. We could even have the 'odd' cat in there to show inclusion and diversity in these changing times.
We'd need to know the animals abilities, their form and if they can chase the ball and catch it, dribble, pass , tackle , bark, (meow, if necessary), scratch, wag tails, pant and generally work together.
We'll ask Lucy to look into it and put something out on social media and see if our customers might send in some pictures of their lovely pets with their balls and then we can base some more illustrations on the favourites and hand out a few Scruffy dog notebooks or cards to the owners of the teams that gets picked.
It'll be the first ever Pup World Cup!