The Dawg Pound: A Forty-Year History

The Dawg Pound: A Forty-Year History

40 years ago, it started with a barn. In the east end zone of municipal stadium, a new kind of band section was born. Loud, loyal, relentless. They called it the dog pound. What began as a rallying cry from two cornerbacks turned into something bigger. A movement. a mindset, a symbol of what it means to be a Cleveland Browns fan. Through the cold, the chaos, the comebacks, and even the years without a team, the dog pound never wavered. From dog masks and shoulder pads to bone waving fans and relentless barking, it’s become one of the most iconic sections in all of sports. And now it’s time to celebrate. Dog Pound XL. 40 years of heart, grit, and the loudest bark in football. This is the Dog Pound of 40-year history. Before it was a section in the stadium, it was an attitude on the field. In 1985, two cornerbacks, Henford Dixon and Frank Minfield, were lighting the spark that would become the dog pound. During training camp at Lakeland Community College, they barked to fire up their teammates. And Cleveland barked back. The dog pound wasn’t crafted in a meeting room. It was forged in the dirt, in the heat, in the grind of practice. This is where the story begins. All right. So when I say dog pound to you, what goes through your mind? What goes through your mind? Dog pond. Hand for dicks. Frank Benfield, the dogs. When this whole thing came about, it came from me uh really growing up down south, a little town outside of Mobile, Alabama called Theodore. But on a little dirt road, I remember the old dog uh chasing that cat down that dirt road. We thought of our defensive linemen as like a dog chases a cat or we say the dogs up front chasing the quarterback and uh they’ve really lived up to that name because uh they’ve come through very well last year and they really got to the quarterback. We were at training camp and we’re at practice and the fans were could be at that time the fans could be really close to the field and we were barking at those guys but then the fans just took over the whole thing and when we started barking they started barking and and we tried to tell them that it was for just the defensive line but oh no they were barking the whole team was barking everybody just took over. Frank and I had this little uh competition between the two of us where we tried to see uh who had the best bark. And I used to tease him and tell him his bark was like a chihuahua, you know, one of those little dogs or something. And uh that would make him mad. And uh but we just tried to when we barked, we really really tried to put something into it like, you know, not just a you know, we just tried to put something into it and we would bark like three or four time. And um and that I I think everybody picked up on that. And it really started too as defensive guys barking at training camp and making a lot of noise and then really we were so competitive there was a defensive guys competing against us offensive guys and kind of the birth of the dog pound started. I was definitely covering the training camp at Lakeland. I mean that was just like number one there was like 4,000 people there a day or more because they were in the Bernie Kosar era. It was huge like a huge draw. It was crazy because that was the only time you know you would get that feeling of like an open being close to the to the players you know you literally were I mean 10 ft from the field. It’s really really funny because you cannot today get as close as they were able to get to uh get to the players on the field at training camp. I mean they put a rope up. That rope was like that far. Well Dixon got it going. Uh they all started going on the team and started barking against the opponents and the bleacher section kind of picked it up and started uh barking along with them. So we just all started barking, picked up the dog, started wearing masks, putting ears on, painting our faces, yelling, screaming, barking our brains out. The year of the dog pound, Frank Minfield and Hanford Dixon, they started barking up there at the two defensive ends and in practice at at Lanklin. These guys would be like barking at him to get them to put pressure on the quarterback and that was kind of unique. and we were just trying to get those guys going, but it just uh the relationship with the fans, it just took off. I heard him explain that this was supposed to be just the thing for the defense, but the fans picked up on that like that became the calling card like the almost the minute it started and the fans thought that was so cool and then they got into it. Now they felt part of the team, I believe. And that’s important. And I think all great defense have to have something they can identify themselves with. It didn’t take long for the dog pound to move from the field to the stands. Fueled by passion and a little bit of chaos, fans took the idea and ran with it. Masks, bones, paint, nicknames. Led by one fan in particular, John Big Dog Thompson, the East End zone became the loudest, rowdiest section in football. Everybody was into it. The fans, people started wearing dog masks, getting the dog bones. They were already barking, but they took it to another level. when it most started to make an impression was was that all those fans started getting their names on the back of their jerseys like big dog or you know like all of a sudden there’s all these people in the end zone wearing these Browns jersey was something dog on the back I think I noticed big dog in training camp I could see him now he would throw on that mask and he’ll have that dog bone and I’m telling you it was My name is John Thompson, big dog. Been a Browns fan my whole life. Season ticket holder since 1978. In that year, you know, 85 going to this bar with my buddies. When we came out, there was a one of those signs that you tow on the back of a car and it had lit up and it had an arrow on it and it’s grand opening. We’re like, “What is this place?” You know, and it’s like it’s a costume shop. behind the counter were all these old rubber masks like monsters, wolves, and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I noticed up in the corner this dog. And I like seen it and I just started laughing to myself. I’m like, “Dog, you know, those guys are all barking out there. Let me grab this dog mask.” And then I started putting it on when the team was out in the end zone. So, this is the bone I’ve been using, the collar. Obviously, there is no dog without a collar, right? This mannequin head’s been with me forever. That’s uh my mom’s wig head. She’s up there still keeping an eye on me. But, uh the mask, I’ve been through a number of helmets. So, these helmets when it gets bitter cold and you’re at the stadium in the cold, a lot of times they break or they get cracked if you drop it or not. But uh basically uh you know that’s the that’s the gear up. He did become the face of the dog pound. It was great that he was so big. I mean you just couldn’t have had somebody being the sort of the mascot or the face of the dog pound who was a small person. It needed to be a big guy like that. And so he fit the role absolutely perfectly. He just helped create this myth or perpetuate the myth and make it even grow. In ‘ 85, I believe there was a game. It had me barking like in slow motion. Bob Trumpies like look him bark like in there laughing on their broadcast. After that, there had been starting people to pop up. Bleacher Creatures, Sick Dog, Jam Dog, the Dog Brothers. But the next year, 86, it was insane. The dog pound kind of exploded because all of a sudden, you know, like we get down the first game and there’s like, check this dude out. Look at this dude. That’s pretty cool. So, I became stogy dog and then I had this hat that I made. There you go. Jim Morotus, Browns fan since far back as I can remember. I’ve been a seasoned ticket holder since ‘ 88, but I was going before that couple years at least. For some reason, my wife went into a past store and found that and brought it, you know, cuz she knew how much of Browns fan I was and about the dogs. So, she brought it home to me and I said, “What the heck?” So, then I made the hat. The reason I was called Stogy Dog is I I started that name because my father smoked cigars. So, it was kind of like to honor him is why I did that. My biggest sense of pride is this. I have my own card. I’m in this Sports Illustrated. There’s a picture of me in there. Feeling like you’re a little bit of a celebrity, you know? Let me see. I think I started this maybe about 10 years ago. A lot of signatures on there. Some pretty good ones. I think I got like Kosar, uh, Jeff Feain. I can see real Dick Ambrose. I started bringing it to the games. I had to get permission from the main guy at the Browns. He said, “Yeah, sure. Bring it in.” So, I had a letter to bring with me. Every time I go, I had to show the letter. The main relationship I remember going way back was with uh the guy they call Big Dog, John Thompson. That’s the one guy I used to be around a lot. There’s a picture of me and John together. That whole section is just unbelievable. These guys every single game they would bring in this dog house and they would sit this dog house right there in the dog pound and it was right there. Come to find out they were sneaking in a cake of beer. I mean, come on. Who does that? Who who who says, “Hey, we’re going to take a dog house into the game today.” And back then it seemed like, you know what? If this is what’s going to help the Browns win, we don’t care. My name is Jim Baker, 68 years old and for as far as I can remember, I’ve been a Browns fan. I mean, we had 10 guys with season tickets and I’ve had season tickets for 40 plus years. We would take banners. They take them into every game. My brothers would hang them up. Dixon and Minfield could see it and they always would run and pay homage and the rest of the defense would too. So, it was cool. We took that dog house in and it did take multiple people to carry it in and you could probably have one person carry it out. That part was true. That’s the late dog house. The old dog house was Yeah. 10 times heavier. Where’s the Eddie Johnson one? Right here. Right. He hit me in the chest and it spilled all on his helmet. Do you remember that? He was blowing it like because all the Mountain Dew and uh certain beverage was spilling all over him. And that do house that was actually another guy from Wellington, Tom McMahon, who just was a a one ina- million type of individual. And unfortunately, Tom has passed. But there was a dog’s dog house that he decided to take. He found a way to hollow out the top part of that, which was a great resource for smuggling beer in. That’s the thing that I’ll always remember being able to get up there with my brothers, with my cousins, pour our heart and soul into rooting these guys on and and come Monday morning, get up and get back to the real world and go work your butt off and wait till the next Sunday. When you coupled the dog pound and that whole phenomenon, it really helped fans embrace that football team and fall in love with that football team and it’s persisted all of these years. So that’s uh you know how you can tell it really caught on and it caught fire. Dog Pound fans, they would dress in these costumes that were pretty wild. She’s almost like a puppet. Hello. My name is Deborah Darnell, aka the Bone Lady, and I’ve been a Browns fan my whole life. I was living in Columbus when the Browns left and I boycotted NFL football until the Browns came back. The expansion draft happened in January of 99. I literally woke up and said, “I’m painting my car like a Browns helmet and I’m going to put a 8ft bone on top.” I could have gone on forever adding things and if any Browns fans have ever seen the Bone Mobile or been in it, they would understand. I was a little obsessive. You could hardly see over the dash cuz there was so much stuff. One night I was in the garage. I made the beehive wig. So I made the whole outfit and then I wanted my skirt to stick out and there was this place called Yankee Trader in Columbus. I said, “I want my skirt to stick out.” And he goes, “Hula hoop, honey. You got to have a hula hoop.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s brilliant.” So I just kept wearing it and it just turned into this thing. Like the first year went to the Super Bowl with Big Dog, I always say I got on this roller coaster ride, but I didn’t know I was going to be on the ride. I didn’t plan to be on the ride, but I was having a good time. And that’s the lesson. Like, do what you love. Do what makes your heart sing. The Here’s the picture of when I first created the Bone Lady and the Bowmobile. Let’s see. Oh, here I am with Lou Groa. And then this is Don Cochroft in the Bowmobile signing it. And this is my friend, he has since passed away, Jim Madden. He was the president, the Mansfield Browns Beckers. And that’s me in the Dog Pound with him. Yeah. Here’s a little diagram of my outfit. Let’s see. Well, I’ll show you the back. I’ll show you the front first. You have to have a tiara. And um let’s see. Just different buttons. My life is so organized. I don’t even have to be there. I kick your ass, but this is my best dress. B Lady says football’s for girls. Then I made some of my own buttons. Oh, there’s my buddy um Ken Dog right here. So that’s what I did is I made buttons with of all my buddies and put them in my wig so I’d always have them around. And then this is the back with a Steeler sock, which I thought was great. Um, oh, and this was my license plate on my bow mobile. We’re back. Yeah, that was my license plate. I always felt honored to be a part of it. And I’ve met some of the most wonderful people. All my friends that I’ve made since I became the bone lady. I never would have met them if I wouldn’t have woke up and decided I was going to do my car and make a beehive. I mean, you know, and now I look back on those 23 years or whatever. Like, it was great. It was great. And I felt proud being in the Dog Pound. There was really a sense of pride because other teams would come and you knew that they knew we were the Dog Pound. And there was kind of a empowering feeling with that. It was intimidating. It was unforgettable. And it was ours. Cleveland’s notorious dog pound. The dog pound became the soul of the stadium and the voice of the city. This was no longer just a fan section. It was a force and it gave opponents something to fear. It was a force to be reckoned with. I mean, when you came into Cleveland Brown Stadium, you really had to know that you were going to have to contend with those fans. They were going to make sure that the enemy knew that they were in enemy territory. Players had come out there, the opposing team, they got to warm up in front of us. I loved it because when those guys came out to warm up, my whole goal was to get their heads out of the game, get them focused on us. The hell with who they have to line up against, you know, we were calling them names, they were calling us names. It really got the the fans involved in the game. Naturally, there were parts of that that weren’t always good. They would throw batteries like 9V batteries at players. Now you think about that. I feel like somebody threw a prosthetic leg out there one time. Biscuits flying at them. Snowballs. Somebody had roasted a pig and here come my pig’s head come flying out into the end zone. Like check that out. At one point it got so bad that the officials moved the action to the other end of the field. It was the first time that I saw a football team have to go the same way every time they got the ball because their backs could they could not be close to the dog pound because of the things they were throwing. I’ve never been in a football game and they they did that. I never heard of that. I didn’t know it was possible. Bottlegate was something started in the dog pound, the upper dog pound. And all of a sudden these bottles were coming over. They were like hitting me in the beehive. They were hitting people in the head. My brother’s like, “Come on, we’re going.” I’m like, “No, no, we’re staying.” You see one bottle go, then you see a handheld radio go and next thing you know it was raining bottles. They were hitting the umpires and that was the craziest thing I remembered. That’s the dog pound. You know, only the strong survive in there. The impact it has on the opposing team is awesome. And I got to I got to see that firsthand when I had my season tickets cuz they were right in front of the dog pound. And that’s where all the guys came and jumped in where I was at and we got that picture. It was all over the news and stuff like that. So that was probably like my second favorite moment about the dog pal. The the recent one was the dog the the smash the guitar. I think that’s awesome cuz it gets the former players back and it gets everybody who you know once cheered for you to see you again, see how things going and and it gets people pumped up. Who doesn’t like to see somebody destroy something? You know what I mean? And then uh my first time being a dog pound captain was a Steelers game Thursday night and they gave me the mic. I think that was the probably the last time they gave me the mic, but uh I dropped the fbomb and said F Pittsburgh. Here we go, buddies. Here we go. Let’s go. It’s Pittsburgh. Stadium went crazy and yeah, you know, but hey, it’s Pittsburgh, so it is what it is. There’s different verbiage that you get when you’re on the other side. you know, they saw me with the jersey on. They like, “How could you?” You know, so I got the the other side where they weren’t they weren’t looking for me to do well, basically. Let me put it that way. They you couldn’t shut them up. They were great. They intimidated from from the start. I actually ate one of the dog bones they had. It was painted though. I had issues. Yeah, they’re probably dusty. I brought these from my basement. Although I think this Bob Goolick one sort of epitomizes the dog pound a little better as far as the mentality. There is a poster of Hanford and Minnie on the uh West Third where that courthouse is with dogs in suits. You got to find out if you’re going to do something about this. You cannot do this show without that poster. Find the poster. He found the poster. Four guys all in white with dogs on the courthouse downtown Cleveland. This was one of the first thing they did as a group to really be considered themselves the dogs. Wow. The last dogs of defense. Me and my boy Mighty Manny standing on the steps of the courthouse. Me and my boys. That’s where it all came from. Started right here. You guys took pictures in white suits and you know ties and you know and with shepherds Doberman Rottweiler but it became a big deal and you look 40 years later of what it is. This how I know the thing had took off. Frank and I went to patent it NFL properties already had we were we go dog it. We say god dog it. You guys wouldn’t believe some of the comments that we would get from other teams talking about the dog pow. They’re saying where they going nowhere near that damn dog pile. They just wanted to show that they supported their team. And we loved every minute of it. It’s a way of life. It’s a culture. It’s handed down. And so I think that uh it will continue on and on and on for many, many years to come. The stadiums have changed. The players have changed. But the dog pound has endured. From Municipal Stadium to Huntington Bank Field through 0 and6 in playoff runs, the Dog Pound has stood as a constant. Today it may look different, but the bark is just as strong. Connecting players and fans, bridging generations, and uniting a city. This is not fading. This thing is still here. I mean, it’s as strong as ever. uh you got uh even more fans coming to the game and they have their dog off fit on to uh support this team and it just means a lot to see that they’re still there and they’re as strong as ever and they’re doing whatever they can to uh support this football team and let this football team know. our fans and the dog pounds absolutely evolved in a spectacular way and and they absolutely have kept up. The intensity is is been unmatched. It’s it’s awesome. We talk about that 12th man on the field. That’s what the dog pound is all about. They’re letting these players know that we got your back in the stands. You guys go ahead and do what you need to do on the field, but don’t worry about this. We got this. For me, the dog pound was the ones you could count on. They were the ones that were going to be there. Rain, shine, or snow. Those guys were the guys that were so close to what we were as young ball players. The day I showed up in Cleveland, I made a commitment to myself that I wanted to turn this team into a winner. I saw the incredible history, the pride of the people that are Browns fans, the people of Northeast Ohio. I felt like I owed it to them. somebody that’s so passionate and loyal and so invested in their team. You’re a Browns fan and you’re a legitimate passionate Browns fan. This is the best place you could ever be because everybody knows all the players. They’re not just fair weather fans. They’re not just coming in there. They know every the center, the guard, the tackle. They’re calling people by name. If you know ball, this is where you need to be. They treat me like family. The fandom is off the field. I go into a restaurant, they know a return, they can recite a return or a play I had. dinners on them without even me knowing and they’ll come up and I’m like I knew that was you and I’m like I got the money I promise paying for gas at the pump and these are blueco collar workers people who don’t aren’t wealthy aren’t rich spending their hard-earned money on you know alumni and current players just because they they appreciate your return they appreciate that effort that we gave how do I see the future of the dog pound and the new stadium well I think new dome stadium or not the spirit of the dog pound is going to carry on because it lives with Brown’s Nation. I think whether you have a roof over the stadium or you don’t, I think that that loyalty, that tradition, that pride is going to carry on. But if you do have a roof, can you imagine how loud and how influential the dog pound is going to be when the other team is trying to work their way into that side of the field and all of a sudden that dog pound bark is like three or four times as loud. opposing teams, they feel it and they do not want to go anywhere near that dog pound. I had no doubt that they would adapt to uh the new stadium because uh they’re not farewell fans. They love their football team. It doesn’t matter where they move. Cleveland Browns fans are going to be right there. That’s why I say these fans are the best fans anywhere in the world. After playing ball here and still living here, I’ve had numerous people walk up to me and bring me photos of themselves when they were babies with their parents going to games and say, “Hey, I want to show you this picture. I knew you would be here today.” And they pull out the picture of them being six or seven years old with their parents. There’s a lot of folks that will get an opportunity to be a part of it and never really appreciate it until it’s over. But this is one great place to play football. This this city is special. Cleveland. I I tell everybody anywhere, best fans anywhere in the world, best dogs anywhere in the world, because you look at it, when this team is not winning any games, they’re there. They show up and they support this team. And that’s what the dogs are all about. As the future takes shape, new stars, new seasons, even talks of a new home, the spirit of the Dog Pound carries on. 40 years in, this isn’t the end of the story. It’s the start of the next chapter. And the Dog Pound is ready for what’s next.

Dive into the electrifying 40-year history of the Cleveland Browns’ legendary “Dawg Pound”! This documentary explores how a rallying cry from two defensive backs, Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, ignited a movement that transformed the east end zone of Municipal Stadium into one of the most iconic fan sections in all of sports.
Experience the intimidating atmosphere the Dawg Pound created for opposing teams. Through the cold, the chaos, the comebacks, and even the years without a team, the Dawg Pound never wavered, becoming the “soul of the stadium and the voice of the city”.
40 years in, the spirit of the Dawg Pound is as strong as ever, connecting players and fans, bridging generations, and uniting the city. This is not the end of the story; it’s the start of the next chapter for the most dedicated fans in football.

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/browns
View Schedule: https://brow.nz/kj6a
Tickets: https://brow.nz/mrbo

FOLLOW US
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@browns
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clevelandbrowns/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Browns
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clevelandbrowns

#ClevelandBrowns #Browns #documentary