Local rescue dogs romp in Bowl

hanging from the goal post.

The Puppy Bowl also features baby barnyard cheerleaders — ducklings, piglets and bunnies — working the sidelines to fire up fans. All are rescues. Shelter cats star in the Arm & Hammer half-time show and Meep, an African grey parrot (@MeepTheBird) will provide live updates on Instagram and Twitter throughout the game.

Now let’s meet the local canine contestants:

Aquaman is a treeing Walker coonhound born at the Animal Friends shelter. Each of the eight puppies in his litter received a super hero name, including Batman, Superman and Huntress.

Volunteers at All But Furgotten confiscated Sunny and Bailey from hoarders, and Frankie came from a shelter in the South where a high percentage of animals are euthanized. The group includes four humane agents who receive no pay to investigate cases of neglect and abuse.

Although Sunny and Bailey look like terrier mixes, Furgotten volunteer Erin Cassidy said they aren’t sure of their breeds. The Puppy Bowl website lists Sunny as a starter and suggests she is a mix of pit/ American Staffordshire terrier/Rottweiler.

“Everybody fell in love with Sunny,” said Ms. Cassidy, who drove the puppies to New York with volunteer Melanie Wedge and her daughter, Madison. “Sunny scored a touchdown,” so she thinks we’ll see the little brindled pup on television.

Frankie, a husky mix with one blue and one brown eye “was rather overwhelmed by it all. I don’t think we’ll see herin the bowl.”

All four puppies have since been adopted. Frankie was adopted by Shelly Doyle of Irwin, a Furgotten volunteer. Sunny and Bailey were adopted in New York by people who volunteered at the Puppy Bowl filming.

Aquaman spent three days with Cody Hoellerman, the communications coordinator at Animal Friends who drove the pup to and from the game. “He was fantastic in the car and at the Puppy Bowl.”

Weighing 20 pounds, “Aquaman was one of the biggest puppies,” Mr. Hoellerman said.

“They split the puppies into smaller groups for the filming, and the big puppies were separate from the little ones. It was really good puppy socialization. It was as cute a day as I ever spent.”

When he returned, the puppy was quickly adopted bySara Birckbichler and D.J. Dorko of Carrick. They were won over by his friendly disposition, hound dog ears and feet that were disproportionately large for his body. They namedhim Dak.

“Animal Friends didn’t tell us he was in Puppy Bowl until after we signed the adoption papers,” Ms. Birckbichler said. “We’re very excited about that, and we’re telling everyone who will listen.”

The couple both are football fans, “and we tried to give him a Pittsburgh football name,” she said. They tried Ben (after quarterback Ben Roethlisberger) and the names of other Steelers.

“He didn’t respond to those names, but he did answer to Dak,” the first name of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.

The 2017 Puppy Bowl had 2.5 million viewers. Puppy Bowl XIV will repeat all day and night for 10 hours.

PASADENA, Calif. — Sometimes a TV show is more than the sum of its parts. Other times it’s the parts that make the show. In Starz’s sci-fi-tinged thriller “Counterpart” (8 p.m. Jan. 21), series star J.K. Simmons (”Whiplash,” “Oz”) is the show as he plays two identical-looking but very different characters personality-wise.

Viewers meet Mr. Simmons’ Howard Silk, a mildmannered, little cog in a big machine, as he works for a United Nations spy agency in Berlin. Silk has been on the job for 30 years, seeks a promotion but gets shot down. His wife, Emily (Olivia Williams, “Dollhouse”), is in a coma after getting hit by a car, and Howard is understandablya bit of a sad sack.

Then he learns part of his agency’s job is to protect a portal to an alternate dimension that is home to nearidentical counterparts of everyone

If it’s Wednesday, this must be Belgium. Or something like that.

“The Amazing Race” took its remaining teams from Iceland to Antwerp this week, where some struggled with the math of diamond appraisal and others had to handset type in a printing museum. But the most notable segment involved humiliation, not generally “TAR’s” stock-in-trade.

In a first for the longtime CBS show, head-to-head competition decided who would reach the finish line mat. One team member had to dress up as a frite, or French fry, to maneuver a handcart of bags of spuds around an obstacle course at the Grote Market. The master of this was Indy 500 winner Alex Rossi, who proved to be world class at pushing both metal and potatoes.

Uniontown native and professional skier Kristi Leskinen also breezed through the course; she and Jen Hudak finished third for the leg.