Boise State's Tee Retriever is a Labrador Retriever

One of the more subtly amusing machinations of a football contest is that moment right after kickoff, when the ball is sailing toward the returner, the kicker is following through, the kicking team is sprinting to the other end … and someone has to run out there and get the dang kicking tee off the field.

This is often handled by a member of the equipment staff, or somebody’s kid, or whatever. But Boise State uses a dog, because the more dogs we can add to sporting events — or events of any kind, really — the better.

The tee dog is a resurrected tradition at Boise State. It all started in the early 90s, when a black lab named Kicks would be sent out to fetch the tee, in exactly the manner you see above. Naturally, this delighted everyone, but Kicks retired in 1998 and so for a great while Boise State was without a tee dog.

Finally, in 2010, the delightful practice was resumed with a pup named Zee.

Zee has since been replaced by Rox Zee, who as you can see had to put in a lot of training to win the job.

Such good pups.