Bully Bash

Where do I even begin to describe Bully Bash?  For starters, it's Chicago English Bulldog Rescue's biggest annual fundraiser. Guests buy tickets for the event, businesses set up booths and of course, there are a whole lot of bulldogs! 

 

 

All of the adoptable dogs were on duty to make new friends.

There were even adoptable trading cards (with fun facts on the back), which were a hit!

With a bunch of bulldogs, there's bound to be a bunch of "business"

The stage entertainment starts of with a Rescue Parade. Each dog that's been rescued, with adopted or up for adoption, gets to strutt their stuff across the stage. A few fact's about each dog is shared. It's a heartwarming moment to think how far so many of the dogs have come.

Diesel showed off his talent of High-Fives



Last year the event was primarily outside and when the rains came, the agility course went down with it. This year, we had some new volunteers offer to work on the course. You may think bulldogs are slow, but with encouragement, they can be surprisingly quick!

Ben and I were assigned to man the children's booth. In past years this was said to be hit-or-miss, but between our wordsearch, coloring contest and tattoos; we stayed quite busy!

 We even had some bulldogs, like Rook, who wanted to join in the fun!



One huge highlight of the day was seeing our former fosters! 4of our 5 adopted fosters were there. I can't say they all remembered us, but each definitely seemed to have a split second "Wait, do I know you?" type thought.



Perhaps the event is so fun because we get to see a lot of people who are just as crazy about their dog(s) as we are.

The costume contest is one of the main attractions. A lot of prepation goes into this from the contestants!

I loved this little gnome!

The costume contest includes several categories: Best Couple, Girliest Girl, Manliest Man, Sports Star and Celebrity. Some people get so creative; it's amazing. These aren't your typicall off the shelf dog costumes. They're added too or handmade! 

 

Poor Daffodil, she hated her Princess Leia buns!

Whoever said that dogs hate costumes, they're wrong. Well, as proven above, typically wrong. Tell me these pups don't look like they're having fun?!

 

We had a lot of lovely ladies!

Here were the manly "men"

Poor Brutus lost his shorts on stage, but that didn't keep him from smiling!

Knucklehead the Cookie Monster; seems fitting!

A bulldog in a whoopie cushion?! Now that's a great disguise!

(If you're hung out with one, you probably know they can be quite gassey).

 

Here were some of the celebrities...

 

Petey the Chippendale

Wonderwoman

Leonardo DiCaprio from Catch Me if You Can

Duck Dynasty

Marilyn

and last but not least...

Little Mermaid

We had a raffle for this humungous bulldog statue; to be honest we didn't even buy a ticket. I mean, what would we do with that thing?

Another big fundraising portion of the event was our silent auction, which included autographed sports gear...



...and this adorable bulldog chalk board that I must have debated on a hundred times (don't worry, I did grab his business card, just in case!)

There was a lot of fun and a lot of tongues!

 

At the end of the day, the event was a success. Everyone left tired, dogs and volunteers included.