Lions head coach Dan Campbell, in all of his 6-foot-5 masculinity, is a little dog man.
A photo posted to Instagram Monday by Campbell’s wife, Holly Campbell, showed the pair clinking venti Starbucks cups to celebrate Sunday’s trouncing of the Jacksonville Jaguars. But it was a designer dog seated in Campbell’s lap that stole the shot, drawing surprise and delight from online commenters.
“Did not have ‘Dan Campbell’s purse dog’ on my bingo card,” X user @KevinDonlin commented on the image reposted on the platform formerly called Twitter.
“Dog takes out the ankles, coach takes out the kneecaps,” wrote @justinhecht, a reference to Campbell’s famed January 2023 comment in which he promised that, when knocked down, the Lions would not only get back up but “on the way up … bite a kneecap off.”
By early afternoon, the X post had received more than 12,000 likes.
An internet deep dive suggests the “purse dog” in question is a five-pound teacup Yorkie named Thelma, taken in more than a decade ago along with another — naturally, named Louise.
Campbell previously discussed the pair in an interview with The Athletic, saying it was Holly’s idea to get the “two clowns.”
Initially, Campbell had “no use” for the puppies, the outlet owned by the New York Times reported. Yorkies, particularly before they’re trained, are widely considered an annoying breed, so much so that there’s an entire TikTok category devoted to complaints about them.
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But by the time Campbell spoke to The Athletic in 2022, the dogs were accompanying him on his daily Starbucks runs and taking turns sleeping nestled in his armpit, adding to the image the 48-year-old coach, husband, and father of two has cultivated as a warm-hearted everyman.
In a photo that accompanied the article, Campbell looks sideways at Louise as she sits on his shoulder, sporting a mohawk. The image later became a topic on ESPN’s NFL Live.
“When I saw this, I already liked the guy, but I just like him even more,” host Laura Rutledge said. “He’s a little dog guy, it’s amazing.”
Sports reporter Mina Kimes responded that, “It takes a lot of confidence to be a big guy who’s proud of his little dogs. I see credibility, I see confidence.”
In a 2021 interview with Sports Illustrated columnist Albert Breer, Campbell shared the distinction between the two Yorkies.
Thelma: “awesome,” “sweetest thing ever.”
Louise: Also sweet, but “not going to come until she wants to come … she just sits there and looks at you. But the minute you turn your back on her and walk away, here she comes. She’s right in your hip pocket.”
(This trait helped inform his approach to coaching, as he told Breer the same can be true for players: “The harder you push one way, they’re going to push even harder the opposite way. Whereas if you just kind of let it go, they’ll be right by you. They’ll be right in your hip pocket.”)
Recent photos from Holly Campbell’s Instagram appear to show only Thelma and another family pet, reportedly a Catahoula leopard dog named Bird.
Holly has taken to posting photos of Dan on what she calls “Victory Mondays,” allowing fans to get a glimpse of the coach’s home life with the Lions now at 9-1 for the first time in franchise history. (Their only better start: a 10-0 mark in 1934, their first season in Detroit.)
A “Victory Monday dog pile!” post from the start of the season, hashtagged “daddyshome,” showed Bird licking Campbell’s face as Louise squeezed between Campbell and the arm of a sofa chair, one eye visible behind a tuft of blonde hair.
“Pup is the real winner here,” commented Raphael Roufail, a realtor specializing in professional athlete relocation.
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