Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier celebrated National Puppy Day with a visit to the Best Friends Animal Society rescue center in lower Manhattan, where he spoke with Anna Gravel about the benefits of adopting a rescue dog. 

<div class="block">Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier celebrated National Puppy Day with a visit to the Best Friends Animal Society rescue center in lower Manhattan, where he spoke with Anna Gravel about the benefits of adopting a rescue dog.&nbsp;</div><div class="article-body-video" data-caption="" data-isLive="false" data-src="https://vod.chdrstatic.com/transcode/905ca592-63e9-4053-bde6-4ae7f0b59074/905ca592-63e9-4053-bde6-4ae7f0b59074.m3u8"></div>

Wake Up With Cheddar

Manhattan Shelter Highlights the Benefits of Adopting a Rescue Dog 

Welcome back everyone today. It's one of our favorite days. It's National Puppy Day and Baker and I both love our rescue dogs. We talk about them every single day. Take a look at our cutie on the right and Mario, you're on the left, on the right. Marney's on the right. Oh, by the way, that's my, that's my new tile I installed in my house. You do that? Of course, we did. No, I didn't it. So, yeah. So if you're thinking about adopting a puppy of your own, our very own shade and here is on the scene with more. Hopefully the puppies get it nice. Well, you know, there's no better place to celebrate National Puppy Day than the Best Friends Animal Society. It's the perfect place because they are a rescue center with locations all across the country. So wherever you are, you can get a beautiful pet check out Everett right here and his little brother, they are playing so fun Over there. Wait till you see Russell, they're gonna be all over the place. OK. So let's get to some of these numbers between 37% and 47% of Americans have a dog at home that's 85 million households nationwide. And almost 77 million dogs, dog ownership is on the rise and it's increased almost 40% in the past decade. So Americans clearly love their dogs and dogs are some of the biggest stars on social media. They have 130 billion views on Tiktok and people are actually teaching their dogs to speak. Take a look. Who is this? Yes. Who is this? Yeah. Yes, Baba, here we go. So you may be wondering, well, what are the most popular dogs? What the most popular dog breed in 2022 was the French bulldog. And they are adorable. Followed by the Labrador Retriever Golden Retriever. My favorite is the German Shepherd and the Poodle. And you might think that you could only find those type of dogs from a breeder or a pet store. But that's not true because 25% of dogs in shelters are pure bred and over half of the dogs owned in the US are mixed breed and it's actually affordable as well because 65% of Americans adopt their dogs from shelters for free. So, if you wanna check out these little cute puppies right here, hey guys. Hey, hey, how are you? Look at them. They're like, what? Oh, ok. We've gotta go back. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, look at parking. They're excited. We've got to go and play with them. We're gonna get with and in just a few minutes we're gonna be back out here in about a half an hour talking to reps from this place at Best friends about why puppy meals are bad as well as maybe some tips on adopting if you're thinking about it and how to take care of your animals at home. All right, I'm gonna go play with them. Shannon. I know you love puppies. I know you love puppy. Shannon. I, I don't know if he's hearing me, but he, hopefully we can talk him into a, hopefully you can adopt one. Maybe we can talk you into it today. Is, is it today me, my kids might be watching. The kids are at school right now. Not all right. We're gonna check back in with Shannon. Oh my God, he's got the best assignment today. And by the way he mentioned, which is really important. Some shelters. Can we give you the dog for free? And that's good because they've already got the health checks. All those, their vaccines, all those other things which usually cost hundreds of dollars in my shelter. They gave me the crate, they gave me the meat, they gave me food. I mean, they really work. They make it easy for you.