I think the latest episode of Greatest American Dog [1] should have been called puppies! It's like TV gold, just mix it up by adding over a dozen adorable Golden Retriever pups. I caught up with Beth Joy, who was eliminated this week, and she opened up about the last episode and her cute pooch, Bella Starlet Dog. Once again, I got some great behind-the-scenes clues and views – check out her answers below!

On the digging challenge:

• Before every dog-bone challenge, we actually get a practice. All dogs dig differently – she actually digs with her nose – and she did so good that I thought she was gonna dig, find Mommy, and it would be awesome.
• I'm completely claustrophobic but I said to myself "I'm going to do this, Bella did great on the dig and she's gonna find me . . . I'll sit for five minutes and have a panic attack for her to find me." But you have to understand when you watch the show, there's reasons why we choose things and I had a feeling but instead she said 'I'm going to be like Lassie and I'm going to bark for someone to come rescue my mom."
• The thing with the dig is every time she did the practice, one of the trainers kept pulling the treats away from her after she found it and I think that upset her; she knew she wasn't going to get the treat again. That was all part of it – what you see is what you get on these shows, not the real experience.

On meeting the puppies:

• Actually with this challenge, we did it the day before and Bella did great in the maze, she came out and went through it a few times but, when you film, there's hours and hours in between. So when Bella came out and greeted the puppies, she was excited but then it was three hours until we did the challenge. It was 105 degrees out that day. Bella overheated, Star overheated, and Presley overheated.

Where is Bella trying to go in that picture up top? Learn the surprising answer when you .

On her stopping to dig under the maze:

• When she went into that hole that you see, that was where one of the cameras were. And they didn't cover it up, they should have covered it up, and she wasn't supposed to go in there. But they never restarted our clock. She saw somebody in there (there are little forts with cameras so that they can get those angles of the dogs running) and so she had gone in there thinking "hey, maybe Mommy's with this guy hanging out." And I couldn't see over the hedge so I was trying to go low to the ground to call her.

On pushing her dog:

• By that time of the day, she was so overheated, it was like "whatever you want to do Bella, that's fine don't worry." Like "come on you want a biscuit, just come through, come to Mommy and we'll go jump in the pool." I would never push my dog the way that Bill pushed his dog, we were all scared at what he was doing to Star, it made me worry about Star. I would never push my dog to a limit like that, it was really insane and unfortunate. I really don't think we should have gone home. It was about citizenship, maybe she didn't lead the puppies out, but at least she didn't try to eat the puppies.

Source [2]