Our Hoya mascot Jack the Bulldog is reportedly now active and recovering from ACL surgery. In March, Father Christopher Steck reported that Jack injured himself while jumping on a couch.

It’s good to have you back, Jack. Keep eating those boxes.

In two weeks, a four-month-old bulldog puppy named Jack Jr., or J.J., will join Jack the Bulldog as a Georgetown mascot-in-training. The puppy was a gift from bulldog breeders Janice and Marcus Hochstetler, the parents of two Georgetown students. In a University statement, Jack’s caretaker Rev. Christopher Steck, S.J., noted that J.J. has “the bulldog penchant for wrestling and already enjoys ripping boxes apart.”

“J.J. has a very mellow personality,” Steck said. “He likes to sit in laps and is curious about the sights and sounds of the world.”

On the afternoon of April 13, the University will hold an official welcome party for J.J. A website will allow students to track J.J.’s progress as he travels from his birthplace in California to the Hilltop. You can also check out this Facebook page for more photos and information about J.J. He’s also on Twitter.

J.J. will live with eight-year-old Jack in Steck’s New South residence, taking classes on box-eating and nap-taking. As he has since 2003, Jack the Bulldog will still appear at Georgetown games in the fall, while J.J. learns the ropes.

“Jack’s presence will provide important support to J.J., since the older dog is already comfortable with his life as a mascot at Georgetown,” Steck said. “J.J. will be looking for signals from Jack, and Jack’s enthusiasm in different environments will encourage J.J.’s own.”

J.J.’s arrival signals the beginning of a transition period from one mascot to another, as age begins to take a toll on our current mascot. Jack tore his ACL while jumping onto a couch earlier this year, and is expected to have surgery in April.

“We are extremely grateful for the Hochstetlers’ gift of a new bulldog puppy to the Georgetown community,” said University spokeswoman Stacy Kerr in a statement. “We are thrilled that J.J. will be joining Jack the Bulldog on campus.”

Photo: Georgetown University

Jack, Our beloved mascot and the dog who eats boxes so we don’t have to, tore an ACL on Sunday. According to Fr. Christopher Steck, Jack likely injured himself jumping on a couch. Steck tweeted Monday that the hobbled bulldog will need two months to recover.

Initially attended to by the mother of former Hoyas basketball player Ryan Dougherty (COL ’11), who is a veterinarian, Jack will visit a canine orthopedic surgeon to plan his recovery. Steck initially suggested that surgery is probable.

The NCAA confirmed to USA Today that Jack will be allowed to attend the Final Four if he has recovered from his injuries and, of course, if the Casual Hoya Delusion Train makes a stop in New Orleans. Mascots do not travel to regional sites.

Jack had to be carried to the Selection Sunday party in Leo’s Sunday. He is not allowed to use stairs for the time being.

The bulldog is the quintessential college mascot. He’s strong, he’s pugnacious, but he’s still cuddly and adorable enough to dress up and take for walks. But according to a recent article published by New York Times Magazine, this perfect breed of mascot is running into some serious trouble.

The story focuses on the practices of breeders of the English bulldog, the breed to which Jack, along with other famous mascots like Yale’s Handsome Dan and UGA’s creatively named Uga, belongs. According to the article, breeders have practiced so much rampant genetic manipulation on English Bulldogs, including inbreeding and targeting “extreme traits,” that English bulldogs as a whole have developed a wide array of health problems. The breed now has a high incidence of respiratory illness, neurological disorders, and difficulties in reproduction and birth, to name a few on the Bulldog’s unusually long list.

The deterioration of the English Bulldog’s health has led some to consider whether continued breeding is ethically sound. And although the article focuses mostly on Uga as its example of a college bulldog, we can’t help but think about the fate of our own poor little Jack. After all, he helps us when we’re stressing about finals, he’s inexplicably gained us street cred as a dangerous school, and he rips apart boxes adorned with opposing teams’ logos like we’ve never seen. We can only hope the poor guy’s health isn’t flailing like those of his relatives.

What the article doesn’t explain, however, is what kind of sick breeding practices led to this. Those are the ones we’d really like to see eradicated.

Photo: Richard J. de la Paz

Last Thursday was “Puppy Day” at George Mason’s law school, when the school paired with a local rescue organization to bring cuddly puppies to campus as a study break for stressed law students.

The Washington Post‘s description of the event makes it difficult not to say aww (video included at link):

The stress of looming exams at George Mason University School of Law lifted for a couple of hours Thursday, thanks to the arrival of 15 homeless and adoptable puppies with velvety ears, soul-searching eyes and names like Doughboy, Sugar and Sue.

It seems that Jack the Bulldog has read on Facebook and Twitter that a lot of Hoyas wanted something similar at Georgetown. From noon to 1 p.m. tomorrow, Jack will be in Shea Commons on the first floor of the Hariri Building, according to an e-mail sent to students in the McDonough School of Business. Charitably taking a break from his entitled, luxurious lifestyle that includes transportation via golf cart and personal service from a crew of doting undergraduates, Jack will supposedly allow students to pet him for good luck.

While only students in the MSB received the e-mail, that doesn’t mean stressed students from the College, the SFS and the NHS shouldn’t descend on Hariri. But you might want to wear the school’s colors of green and silver to blend in.

Jack the Bulldog, our lovable, cuddly-looking mascot, was named one of “College’s Most Dangerous Mascots” by Fox News.

This dog? Dangerous?

We respectfully disagree.

h/t Fr. Christopher Steck

Fr. Scott Pilarz (COL ’81), the man famously known for bringing Jack the Bulldog to Georgetown, will become Marquette University’s 23rd president.

After entering the Society of Jesus, Pilarz returned to his alma mater in 1996 to teach as an English professor. Before he left to become the president of the University of Scranton, Pilarz also served as interim University Chaplain.

While at Georgetown, Pilarz got involved in the “Bring Back Jack” movement, which led to the purchase of Jack the Bulldog in 1999. (Later that year, the Class of 1999 awarded Pilarz the Edward B. Bunn, S.J., Award for Faculty Excellence.)

As Jack’s caretaker, he ultimately brought the dog with him to Scranton when he left in 2003. Jack, now 11, is set to move to Marquette with Pilarz next summer.

The University of Scranton thrived under Pilarz’s leadership, launching a $125 million capital campaign that led to the construction of new residence halls, a student center, and a science building. And despite the distance, Pilarz still maintained a close relationship with Georgetown; he received the Alumni Association’s highest honor, the John Carroll Award, in 2009.

Pilarz will replace Fr. Robert A. Wild, who will step down at the end of the 2010-2011 academic year.

Photo: Marquette.edu

In what can only be called an act of war, a group of high school students threw a water balloon at Jack the Bulldog yesterday.

As a member of the Jack Crew walked Georgetown’s mascot into the courtyard area of the Southwest Quad, the students called out from a fifth-floor window in Kennedy Hall.

“They were just calling him over to harass the dog,” Steck said.

Once Jack and his handler approached, the teens lobbed a water balloon in the dog’s general direction. Although the balloon missed, it “freaked [Jack] out.”

The Department of Public Safety canvassed Kennedy Hall, but the dispatched officer failed to find the guilty parties. (Or as Steck wrote yesterday, “Called DPS. Hunted for the kids. No luck. Evil lurks.”)

The students most likely attend one of the University’s many high school summer programs.

“Because they had the water balloon beforehand, they weren’t necessarily going after Jack,” Steck said. “They were looking for victims and we can’t tolerate that.”

In the past, people rarely harassed Jack, who lives in New South with Steck.

“Two or three times, students have offered Jack something to drink and it was alcohol,” he said. “But, no one’s intentionally done anything like this before.”

We’ll admit it—we love spotting Jack the Bulldog riding around campus in a golf cart with his buddy, Fr. Christopher Steck. For a short time this week, however, it looked like Jack lost his cart privileges.

“Bad news for Jack: he’s going to have to use his paws to get around campus. No more use of the Jesuit golf cart,” Steck wrote in a Twitter message last Saturday.

The Jesuit Community decided to “limit use of its golf carts to Jesuits” after one cart set on fire while students used it. Steck told us in an email that the incident, which occurred “a couple of months ago,” raised liability concerns that led to the stricter policy.

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More famous than that stupid Taco Bell Dog

Family Guy canine Brian Griffin may have dated Lauren Conrad from The Hills, but as far as the American Kennel Club is concerned, he’s still not as famous as Jack the Bulldog.

Beating out Griffin and the song “Who Let the Dogs Out,” Georgetown University’s mascot ranked eighth overall on the AKC’s list of the most iconic dogs in pop culture.

The AKC’s list ranks the 125 top dogs from every aspect of American culture, from television to literature, from sports to art. Jack the Bulldog also beat out Yale’s Handsome Dan and University of Georgia’s UGA, ranking only behind Texas A&M’s Reveille for second place among collegiate mascots.

While beloved dogs like Snoopy and Scooby Doo claimed high spots on the list, some of the rankings (the full list as a PDF can be found here) were more surprising. Long-time favorites Benji (no. 27), Rin Tin Tin (no. 46) and Toto from the Wizard of Oz (no. 24) were beat out by Eddie from Frasier (no. 4) and Griffin from Family Guy (no. 10) for the top spots in the Film and Entertainment categories.

President Obama’s dog, Bo Obama (no. 42) claimed the top spot among political dogs, ranking just above Bill Clinton’s Buddy (no. 44) and Richard Nixon’s Checkers (no. 65).

The rankings were created in honor of AKC’s 125th anniversary and announced “during a press conference in front of a special Snoopy exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.”

Via Georgetown’s Twitter Feed

Photo from Georgetown University