STORRS, CT — More than two years after Jonathan XII retired, there’s a new official mascot at the University of Connecticut: Jonathan XIII, a rambunctious, brilliant white, 100 percent pure Siberian Husky who will make his official UConn debut during the men’s basketball game against Cincinnati Saturday afternoon.
“We’ll let him stay for a little while, then bring him home,” says Danielle O’Reilly, a junior from Middletown, N.J., and treasurer of Alpha Phi Omega, the co-ed service fraternity that has cared for the UConn mascot since the 1970s. “We’ve been bringing him through Gampel Pavilion, so he’s familiar with it, and we’ve had him at basketball practice, so he understands what’s going on. But he hasn’t seen this many people yet.”
The 14-month-old Jonathan XIII was selected from Northern Manor, a breeder in Hartstown, Pa. He has been in the Storrs area for about five months, and has been receiving training from Mark Renick at Connecticut K-9 and Behavioral Services in Watertown.
Like all the Jonathan’s who preceded Jonathan XIII, the dog will be hosted by an area family, and either O’Reilly or co-Husky chair Lauren Ide will retrieve him when he’s needed for an event.
The Husky became UConn’s mascot in 1934, after the University’s name changed from Connecticut Agricultural College to Connecticut State College, and athletic teams could no longer be called “Aggies.”
The Alumni Association board of directors, one of whom had found a 14-week-old Husky at a Huntington, Ct., breeding farm, put the question of a mascot to a student vote, and the students voted overwhelmingly to accept the dog as the new mascot. A subsequent contest to name the mascot led to the tag Jonathan, after Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut's Revolutionary War-era governor.
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