MILL CREEK — He’s got a face that’s itching for a scratching.
Trouser, a 6-year-old English bulldog from Mill Creek, landed a spot on Washington’s Lottery new scratch ticket game featuring six dogs and cats.
About 1.8 million of the $2 “Cats vs. Dogs” scratch tickets were printed, and 303,000 have Trouser’s macho mug wearing a frilly jingle bell ribbon thing around his fat neck.
The dog doesn’t look so thrilled, but his owners sure are.
“Everybody was jumping around yelling,” said proud papa Aaron Adolf, “and Trouser was like, why is everybody jumping around hugging me?”
Competition was fierce among the 1,300 entries in last summer’s online voting contest to select six pets. There were photos of dancing cats in tutus and dapper dogs in bow ties.
Adolf submitted a headshot of Trouser wearing the goofy neckwear that his wife, Candice, bought a few Christmases ago. He used social media to solicit votes from friends.
Lottery spokesman Arlen Harris said “Cats vs. Dogs” was the state’s most popular interactive scratch ticket contest.”We figured we’d get 100 or 200 entries,” Harris said. “It blew us away. We’re brainstorming now for what’s next.”
Other furry winners are dogs Koda Cash of Centralia and Madeline Margaret of Vancouver; Sir Bentley Royce, a Lacey cat; and Mooch and Bobby, two cats from Bremerton.
Winning humans got bragging rights and a stack of souvenir voided tickets. That’s fine with the Adolf clan.
“I showed them to my teacher,” said 11-year-old Kaleb, the oldest of the three two-legged Adolf boys. “It’s cool. I love my dog. He’s my best friend.”
Trouser is a laid-back dude who mostly likes to eat, sleep and watch ESPN. His family rewarded him with a manly leather collar and a few bags of Beggin’ Strips.
“We started letting him on the bed,” Adolf said. “His fat butt can barely make it up there.”
The couple bought their king-sized bed with winnings from a scratch game prize a year ago. “It had a comma and few zeros,” is how Adolf described the prize. The rest of that windfall went toward bills and last summer’s 25-state, 8,500-mile family road trip that didn’t include Trouser.
“We’re avid scratch ticket players,” Adolf said.
Current scratch tickets grand prizes range from $777 to $1 million, depending on the game price. The top “Cats vs. Dogs” prize is $20,000. Three tickets are printed with that sum. It’s unknown which pets behold the jackpot scratch.
The family got their white bulldog as a pup and named him Trouser because from the back it looks like he’s wearing pants.”He was almost a show dog,” Adolf said. “He had the right dimensions and measurements.
“But there were already too many family demands for Adolf, a master control operator at a Seattle television station, and his wife, office manager of North Creek Medicine in Everett.
“We didn’t have the time,” he said. “We both work opposite schedules.”
Trouser’s getting the recognition he deserves.
“He’s an award-winning dog now,” Adolf said. “Hundreds of thousands of people will get to see him now.”
