Dog food. That's what Greg Jordan is going to buy with the $500 gift certificate that his dog won in this year's Pet Idol contest, hosted by The Citizen.

“He'll eat anything,” Jordan said of his six-month-old miniature English bulldog, Gruden. “He's a pig. He even ate the cat's food at my dad's. He goes through a 30-pound bag of dog food a month.” Gruden likes Eukanuba bones and milk bones, too.

Jordan keeps Gruden away from human food as much as possible.

This year 100 pets were entered in the Pet Idol contest, with $8707.25 raised to go to Newspapers in Education and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The numbers for pets entered and proceeds were down from last year. Jordan estimated Gruden had between 600 and 800 votes.

Jordan's mother, Laurie Kulis, gave Gruden to Jordan as a gift. She got the bulldog on the Internet, flew him in from Missouri, and saved about $1,000 doing so.

The strategy for winning the contest was to first get people at Swifty's bar, where Jordan works, to vote.

“I had a lot of people from there,” he said. He also took Jordan around to places where his family and friends worked and had people like his grandmother, Angie Gregory, who works for the town of Sennett, help him. His mother also put the picture up at Niagara Mohawk where she works, and he has two cousins that just love saving dogs drumming up votes.

Jordan calls Gruden “goofy,” contrary to his name.

“Once he sees somebody, he runs up to be petted,” he said. “I named him after Jon Gruden, the Tampa Bay Buccaneer's coach. He's got a real mean look.” He would like to see Gruden do some dog food commercials.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran