Tampa Bay Lightning join hockey dogs with Bolt

The newest member of the Tampa Bay Lightning is Bolt the Lab.

The newest member of the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lightning is Bolt, who will grow up to be a guide dog when he’s a grown-up pup.

Bolt is a yellow Labrador, like most of his fellow official hockey dogs around the NHL.

He was announced on the team’s social media pages on Tuesday morning, August 6.

According to a Lightning press release, was born on March 31 and currently weighs in at 28.5 pounds. This would make him roughly six years old right now in dog years, just starting school.

At twelve weeks old he went to his foster home and his puppy raiser, who will be responsible for raising and training Bolt, socializing him in all the proper guide-dog ways.

Bolt will be trained by Southeastern Guide Dogs, whose goal, as they state on their website, is “serving those who cannot see and those who have seen too much.”

He can be followed on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @BoltsPup. By this video, he’s doing well at making friends within the organization.

Other official team service dogs, most of whom will become guide dogs, include the New York Islanders‘ Radar, the Ottawa Senators‘ Rookie (not to be confused with baseball’s Rookie the Batdog), Finn of the San Jose Sharks, Flambo of the Montreal Canadiens and the St Louis Blues‘ Barclay.

Other hockey dogs include the Chief Morale Officer Smash, former New York Rangers team dog and current pet Ranger, and fan dogs for various teams, led by Bark-Andre Furry and Sir Winston Da Doodle for the Vegas Golden Knights, Gustl Kopitar for the Los Angeles Kings and Ovie the Bulldog and Coco the Caps Pup for the Washington Capitals.

For more Lightning news within the FanSided Network, be sure to check out Bolts by the Bay and Puck Prose for updates.