\u201cThis is amazing for PAWS to have a member of the Kraken come out and take an interest in our work and help us raise awareness about what we\u2019re doing,\u201d she said. \u201cFor our staff, it\u2019s really validating. We can sometimes feel like we\u2019re operating alone out here on our campus, so to know there\u2019s broader interest and support for what we\u2019re doing, I think it really just lifts everybody\u2019s spirits up and gives us that motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n
For McCann, having Cheddar as a four-legged companion helped him through some tough times in recent seasons as he battled a series of lower body ailments that cut into his production numbers. He and his wife acquired the Corgi in 2019 right before the COVID-19 pandemic and not long after he\u2019d been traded by Florida to the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
The couple were fans of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine sitcom where a no-nonsense police precinct commander, Raymond Holt, had a female Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Cheddar.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we always told ourselves that if we ever got a dog, we\u2019d get a Corgi and we\u2019d name him \u2018Cheddar\u2019,\u201d McCann said.<\/p>\n
When the pandemic struck shortly, the three of them spent plenty of time together in their place alone. Corgis have a reputation for stubbornness, and McCann said there\u2019ve definitely been some moments, but overall, it\u2019s something he\u2019d never trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dog just takes my mind away from everything,\u201d McCann said. \u201cI just focus on him and he does on me. It\u2019s a love-love situation, him and I. He\u2019s been so much more than a dog for me. He\u2019s my mental escape from a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
And his wife\u2019s escape as well, especially when McCann is on the road with the team.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d also been from a dog-loving family, that had a Bernese Mountain Dog and a Husky German Shepherd, named Buddy and Hank, who\u2019d interacted with the much smaller Cheddar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey corrected him and they taught him well,\u201d she said of the two dogs, who\u2019ve both since passed. \u201cBut because of that, I think he\u2019s got a lot of confidence in most dogs these days. Because they were so much bigger than him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheddar has also gained plenty of confidence in front of a camera. It was while her husband was still with the Penguins that Val began putting photos of Cheddar on social media.<\/p>\n
Matt Murray, who spent last season with the Kraken, had been Pittsburgh\u2019s netminder and had two massive Newfoundland dogs named Beckham and Leo. Murray and his wife, Christina began putting the dogs on Instagram, and they gained a massive following.<\/p>\n
Val soon began putting photos of Cheddar on his own Instagram account and it took off as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is amazing for PAWS to have a member of the Kraken come out and take an interest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-940641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}