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StarPet

Pocket

Chapter One: From Street Dogs to Pets

After I escaped the cold confinement of the internment camp, life in Italy was near idyllic for a young boy with a vivid imagination who loved animals. Images of Italy's most famous saint, St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, were everywhere: icons in churches, statues in gardens, frescos on village walls. The colorful feast days, when entire villages celebrated the life and times of St. Francis with music, theater, art, games, and picnics, filled my head with visions of an everyday "Peaceable Kingdom." My pets were the village dogs and cats. They weren't really strays, but unlike pets as we know them here in America today, these dogs and cats were left more to their own devices. Much like Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's classic A Streetcar Named Desire, these pets depended on the kindness of strangers--the local villagers who embraced them with open arms. I was no exception.

My earliest memories are of playing with these dogs and cats in front of my favorite fresco of St. Francis. This particular one was the largest and most colorful, depicting the defining moments of the life of St. Francis. The series of life-size paintings guided the onlooker through the life of St. Francis, capturing his most memorable times: first, the beloved saint as a young troubadour entertaining in the streets and cafes; next, preaching his famous sermon to the birds; then, imploring the mayors of the villages to pass laws that people must make certain to feed the cats and dogs and other animals on Christmas Day; another, the famous nativity scene; and, finally, the taming of the legendary wolf of Gubbio. That was the fresco that affected me most.

I would take the street dogs and cats and direct them to act the scenes from the fresco. I would have the dogs and cats -- grouped in circles with dishes of food -- "sit" and "stay" to portray the noble men and women in the cafes where St. Francis entertained when he was a troubadour. For the sermon the little saint preached to the birds, I would try my best to train the street cats not to follow their instincts to go after birds and butterflies. I didn't have much success with that, however.

Cats, of course, are "harder" to train than dogs, as you will discover in Chapters 6 and 7, but I think it would have taken the saint himself to train those streetwise cats not to act on their natural impulses! The nativity scene was fun because it required props and costumes, but my favorite scene was the taming of the wolf of Gubbio. To my young mind, the wolf in the fresco looked very much like my dogs from the internment camp, and I wanted to communicate with the street dogs as I had with the camp dogs. Indeed, I found that the street dogs learned their roles very quickly and happily, and always came back for more fun.

When I look back on that time in my life, I realize my childhood games were actually training for my future, when I would train my StarPets for roles in television and films. In fact, depicting each "scene" from the fresco was very much like working from a TV director's storyboard -- which I will teach you to do yourself with your own pets, in the following chapters.

As a young child in postwar Italy, however, I had no knowledge of television, of course, and had never seen a movie. But one day, my mother took me to a museum, which was showing a six-minute piece of film on a loop -- running it continuously throughout the day for the museum visitors. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a piece of history -- the first film ever made purely for entertainment.

Rescued by Rover was shot in 1905 by Britain's legendary Cecil Hepworth (who also cast his own family in the film) and directed by Lewis Fitzhamon. A terrific Collie dog (named Rover, of course!) comes to the rescue of the family baby, who, despite the watchful attendance of the nanny, has been kidnapped by gypsies! Entranced, I watched spellbound as the camera followed Rover's derring-do detective work from the time of the abduction to the discovery of the gypsies' hideaway and the tearful reunion of the baby with her family!

I watched Rescued by Rover over and over, until my poor mother's patience wore thin and the museum closed its doors. But I wasn't finished with the film. My new childhood game was "Rover."

I endlessly cajoled my poor mother to take me to the museum every day for the run of the film. When the exhibit ended, I was bereft. I began to pester my mother to allow me to go into town with the other kids to see the Saturday matinees. Now I was hooked. Maybe I would find another Rover!

Eventually, my mother relented, and the exposure to movies awakened me to a world I'd never dreamed of. That little theater in postwar Italy didn't have access to the modern American films, but that was just fine with me. I saw all the great early films of the silver screen: Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, and all the Mack Sennett funfests, which included, of course, the famous Keystone Cops. But each time the camera's aperture expanded to include animals my eyes really widened and my own horizons expanded: Chaplin's A Dog's Life, Larry Trimble's Strongheart, Lee Duncan's Rin Tin Tin, Our Gang (with Petey!), and all the animal antics of Mack Sennett's irreverent repertoire! One day, years later, I would put together a reel of Sennett's best moments from his movie menagerie for a fund-raiser to benefit service dogs, but at that point I'm not sure I even understood that the dogs were actors! These "reel" dogs had a very real hold on me. They were my pals, just like my street dogs, who were always there for me.

Twenty years later, I would be directing my own dogs in Italian movies.

My father found a great deal of work in Italy, indeed all over Europe. The ancient Romans had built a complex labyrinth of underground drainage tunnel systems. Their work was so ahead of its time that the system had remained in use even up through modern times. But nothing remains in good working order without upgrades, and Italy's system required constant upgrading. Compounding the problem was the fact that the "landed gentry" had built massive estates and villas on thousands of acres of land over these tunnels. Because of this, my father would be called away all over the continent. Wherever the work took him, I had a new opportunity to acquire new skills that still guide me in my profession today.

At each estate, our family would be housed in modest quarters on the compound along with the other workers -- the household staff, the groundskeepers, and the gamekeepers. As a child who was drawn to the dogs and horses, I hung around the kennels and stables, mesmerized not just by the dogs and horses, but also by the skills of the kennel masters and stable masters. Hungering for any crumb of attention they might throw me, I eagerly sank my teeth into any odd job they might ask of me.

Eventually, they began to teach me what they could, as well as allow me to try my own uncertain hand at dog training and horse training -- even falconry! When the dogs and horses were down for the night -- and I should have been in bed, as well--I would sneak out to the barn to try out my newfound training skills and techniques. Nighttime was showtime for the barn cats! With their keen night vision and physical dexterity, these felines were amazing to watch as they controlled the rodent population and played, pawing at fireflies and jumping at shadows.

As I grew older and practiced my techniques and honed my skills, I had the honor and privilege of apprenticing with some of the most renowned trainers and kennel masters in Europe. Many of the kennels I worked in were devoted exclusively to developing and breeding show-quality dogs, and the experience gave me the unique opportunity to get to understand and work with the different qualities and performance skills of almost every breed of dog.

As I continued my apprenticeships, fine-tuning my craft and learning as much as I could about the trade, what I glimpsed inside the great villas influenced me almost as much as my work in the fields outside those gilded walls. You see, inside were beautiful paintings, great works of art, depicting how the great noble men and women felt about the very animals we were training -- their pets! Wall after wall came to life with pampered pets captured in paint: the master and his hunting dog, the lady and her lapdog, the "nanny" dog in watchful repose at the baby's cradle, a great Newfoundland rescuing a child and her doll from an overflowing brook. I was struck by the power of these painted people and their pets to elicit such pathos from the human heart, the ability of an artist to transmit the power of the human-animal bond -- and how the landed gentry in the paintings could translate the beauty of that intangible bond to others through art.

As I grew older and my world expanded, my father found work in Alsace, the birthplace of the Alsatian -- the German Shepherd -- the breed of Larry Trimble's great dog actor, Strongheart. It was also the birthplace of another icon, Albert Schweitzer. Physician, theologian, musician, and author, the acclaimed Dr. Schweitzer was a consummate humanitarian. His legendary work as a medical missionary serving the poorest of the poor in Lambarene, Africa, had won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, several years before my family and I arrived in Alsace. Much like Mother Teresa today, he became a celebrity of iconic proportions, a universal symbol of altruism, self-sacrifice, and dedication.

Equally concerned for the welfare of animals as for that of human beings, his philosophy of "Reverence for Life" literally came to life in his hospital compound in Lambarene, where he brought life-saving medical treatment, not just to the people, but to their animals as well. And, indeed, when cultural mistrust or misunderstanding threatened to stand in the way of life-saving treatment for the people, he simply allowed his patients to bring their extended families, pets, and farm animals along for the hospital stay, as well. He was a pioneer in pet therapy!

Schweitzer's words and actions inspired people from all countries, all generations, and all walks of life. President Kennedy's Peace Corps was inspired by Schweitzer's work, and so were many of today's animal welfare groups and societies. Indeed, when my family was in Alsace, in the years following the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Schweitzer, people came in droves -- on pilgrimages -- to follow in the venerable doctor's footsteps.

Schweitzer encouraged people to emulate, in whatever way they could, the philosophy of "Reverence for Life," and uttered the now-famous words that gave clarity to my unfocused dreams: "Every man has his Lambarene!"

Schweitzer's words crystallized my destiny, if not my destination, the Lambarene of my heart. It already housed the incredible guard dogs from my early childhood in the refugee camp. Now it made room for the possibility of sharing what they taught me and what they gave me -- and, indeed, what all dogs can teach and give to all people.

So, although I didn't know where my Lambarene would ultimately be, I had a vision of what it could ultimately be. Perhaps I would train people's pets, or maybe become an animal doctor. One thing was certain. My Lambarene would be peopled with animals!

Serendipitously, not long after Albert Schweitzer's words provided me with a road map for the "what" of my existence, my destiny, the American committee for human rights from the United Nations, which, years earlier, had ransomed my family from the internment camp, once again came to our aid and sponsored my parents' United States citizenship. Now, I not only had a destination, I had a glorious destination: the United States of America! New York, to be exact!

My newfound world was upstate New York. My heart may have been in Hollywood and moviemaking, but Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine was my immediate destiny. Sadly, however, my father passed away. Now, as the eldest of my siblings, I switched my studies to animal behavior and psychobiology, and worked as a dog trainer to help support my struggling family. Eventually, however, work began to take up more and more of my time.

I needed to support my family, and I was deeply immersed in training and showing dogs with the Bronx County Kennel Club and the Westchester Kennel Club, when I met the famous animal trainer Captain Arthur J. Haggerty.

Captain Haggerty is an enduring legend who supplied trained animals for Broadway shows and hundreds of feature films and television commercials. Indeed, a true legend and show business character, Captain Haggerty's inimitable look is almost as recognizable as his animal stars! You see, Captain Haggerty's place is often in front of the camera, as well as behind the scenes. An actor as well as a trainer, he was the original Mr. Clean in the company's phenomenal ad campaign -- and many of the stars whose pictures Haggerty's dogs are in often ask Haggerty to appear, as well! Discerning fans can spot him, for example, with both his dog and Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker!

So, when Haggerty offered me the opportunity to work for him, I didn't need to think twice.

One of my early movie projects under Haggerty's auspices was training the animals for the Burt Reynolds film Shamus, which also starred the lovely Dyan Cannon -- not to mention Haggerty himself. Working with Haggerty always promised loads of fun. Although I'd been hired to work with the dogs, the legendary Morris the Cat of 9 Lives fame also appeared in the film, and I had an opportunity to witness the training techniques of Bob Mardwick, the equally amazing cat trainer!

But first and foremost, working with Haggerty gave any trainer -- junior or senior -- a solid, hands-on learning experience, both from the master himself and from the eclectic group of trainers and animals he put together.

During the course of the Shamus shoot, I really came to admire the work of Jai, an incredible Great Dane who had to "attack" Mr. Reynolds in one scene, choreographed by the talented Bob Maida, who was Jai's owner and trainer. Burt does all his own stunts, including those with the dogs.

Reynolds was terrific in working with his animal costars, and his positive experience in that arena stayed with him and served him (and a little dog who was to enter his life!) quite well in the ensuing years. For when Reynolds began directing and producing as well as acting, he scored a real hat trick: His career swung into white-hot high gear with his super-successful Smokey and the Bandit series of feature films, and he didn't leave any really important work to chance. When the script called for a dog, Reynolds himself auditioned all the aspiring animal actors! And, in true good-guy, time-honored Hollywood-legend tradition, the dog he chose for the role was a homeless shelter dog named Happy. And when the film finished shooting, Burt chose Happy to costar with him at home: Reynolds adopted Happy.

It was then that I began to realize the beginnings of my dream of the far-reaching positive effects of the duality of StarPets: training pets for show business, as well as training the pets of celebrities. I really hadn't thought it out to that degree, of course, but I began to realize that by training celebrities to work with animals on the sets of commercials, TV shows, and films, I could foster greater understanding between celebrities and the StarPets they worked with professionally, which would also foster better understanding and treatment of pets in the entertainment industry itself. And, by virtue of the far-reaching orbit of these Hollywood superstars, they could also have a profound effect on the understanding and treatment of pets by the audiences they touch--not only through their films and TV shows but also via radio, TV, and print interviews, as they share their affection and understanding not only of the animal costars they work with, but also of their own pets, and pets in general.

I was still, however, a long way from Hollywood, but my mind was not. In fact, before I left Cornell, I had to write a paper on Charles Darwin's famous dissertation The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. When Darwin wrote, "The dog expresses joy, affection, pain, anger, astonishment and terror, as well as the subtler and more intermediate emotional expressions, such as perplexed discomfort," I couldn't help but think that Darwin was talking like a high-powered theatrical agent promoting his client for a variety of roles. And then, when Darwin begins to contrast and compare the dog with man -- "Even man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs so plainly as does a dog, when, with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master" -- all I could think was that Darwin had discovered the scene-stealing secret of moviedom's magical mutts.

Finally, Darwin concluded, "Nor can these movements in the dog be explained by acts of volition or necessary instincts, any more than the beaming eyes and smiling cheeks of a man when he meets an old friend." Darwin knew that the dog is truly man's best costar.

In fact, there is a classic, quirky early Hollywood five-reel animal film called Darwin Was Right, produced by William Fox and Educational and Tiffany Pictures in 1924. With an all-animal cast of dogs, monkeys, apes, chickens, and birds, it is considered the rarest of all animal films. I hadn't seen that film yet, but what I did know was that Darwin was certainly right about the expressions of emotions in dogs, and I wanted to bring that understanding to as many people as possible. Working in the entertainment industry seemed to be the best way possible. When I finally completed my paper on Darwin, which took quite a while, with all that daydreaming, I began to return to my childhood dream: to make an ordinary dog so special that it would become a star!

Around the time that the original Ben movie premiered and simultaneously made a rat a star and gave Michael Jackson a hit with the movie's title song, I decided that if I was going to study animal behavior any further, it would have to be in a way that was immediately applicable to my life and my dreams, which were, quite frankly, to work with the interaction of people and animals, people and pets, the human/animal bond, both onscreen and offscreen, and, of course, to marry that with my need to support my family.

In short, if I was going to work with rats, they would have to be pet rats or movie actor rats. So, with my mother and siblings firmly ensconced in New York, I arrived in Los Angeles, determined to learn what I could about animals and moviemaking.

It was a difficult time to be in Hollywood. The golden age of animal-driven pictures was drawing to a close. Our nation's international turmoil with Vietnam caused great internal turmoil, its repercussions rippling into an extraordinary upheaval of traditional, intergenerational change -- and then Watergate opened the floodgates of domestic social turbulence, which made family-fare entertainment (which is where animal actors get the lion's share of their work) passe.

I arrived in Hollywood in these transitional times. Work was scarce and the old-timers bided their time. Although the famed Hollywood pioneers, Larry Trimble and his Strongheart, Lee Duncan and the first Rin Tin Tin, were no longer with us, the old guard was still around: the legendary Rudd Weatherwax, Lassie's original owner and trainer, and Bill Koehler, the original trainer of so many of the legendary Disney Dogs. I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from these brilliant, incomparable, and inimitable legends, and to be a part of their world. These giants would live on forever through their dogs captured on film and through their dog-training techniques, used by generation after generation of trainers.

One of the legends who not only survived the "dry" times of the seventies, but actually flourished, was the phenomenal Frank Inn, owner, trainer, and handler of the equally phenomenal dog star Benji. In fact, he was able to successfully bridge the gap from movies to television and back to movies again -- a difficult feat even human actors are rarely able to accomplish.

In those days, Inn had successfully guided the career of an endearing little dog, Benji, from a starring role on the successful television series Petticoat Junction to international film star status, shooting to fame with his incredible, groundbreaking hit movie. As with the other legends, I was privileged to learn from, and be inspired by, Frank Inn.

I found encouragement not only from the old masters, whom I so admired, but also, to my surprise, from other professionals on the sets where I worked. As time wore on, I found that the animals' human costars, as well as the many professionals behind the scenes, began to approach me. "Can you train my dog to do what you just trained that dog actor to do?" "Can you train my cat to do that?" Soon, I found myself doing as much training behind the scenes, personally, as I was, professionally, for the animal actors in front of the cameras!

But fate intervened and ended my Hollywood adventure. My family needed me back in New York, and I had to be there for them.

My father had brought us to New York from Europe, and my mother did not want to leave. My sister Meruet loves animals as much as I do, and I encouraged her to study veterinary medicine. Meruet wanted to build the family business with me, so veterinary medicine gave way to a three-pronged study plan to become a vet tech/groomer/handler. Without Meruet's vision, business acumen, and hard work, my business would not have grown to what it is today.

So we set up shop in a modest building in a beautiful and perfectly suited locale that met both my family's personal needs and my professional obligations. On the edge of historic Van Cortlandt Park, Fieldston Pets was a short ride into Midtown Manhattan for industry shoots and celebrity training sessions.

Fieldston Pets soon grew to include my stable of StarPets, a pet shop, and a grooming salon. As my reputation as "dog trainer to the stars" grew, Fieldston Pets grew to include personal one-on-one training. The pets are never alone, and our work is 24/7, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Our business is a way of life; our work, a labor of love.

That is what StarPets is all about: life and love. It is what we give to our pets, and what our pets give back, in return, to all of us: families, friends, and audiences. Everything else about StarPets is just logistics, mechanics: pet supplies and retail pet shop, grooming, and training. All that is lifeless, meaningless without the heart and the soul and the spirit of the business: the animals themselves.

For to any of us who have ever known or owned an animal, it cannot be a coincidence that animal is derived from the Latin anima -- meaning life, soul, spirit. Indeed, there are as many derivatives as a cat has the proverbial nine lives! From animus (mind), to animistic (spiritual), to animism (the belief that all life has a soul produced by a spiritual force separate from matter) -- that is what our StarPets are to the StarPet Agency. Meruet and I may run the business, but it is the animals who are the soul of the business, the animals who animate it, who give it life and vigor and spirit.

When Fieldston Pets was in its infancy, there were three original StarPets who graced our lives, giving us -- and what would become our life's work -- a defining heart and soul and spirit. These incredible creatures were Orph, the German Shepherd; Mariah, the Timber Wolf; and Muffin, the Tibetan Terrier.

They say that Dog is God spelled backward. If that is true, then Orph, Mariah, and Muffin were my "holy trinity," the canine cornerstone upon which I built the foundation for StarPets.

Orph was my "Strongheart." A magnificent and majestic German Shepherd, Orph was, to me, what the inimitable German Shepherd Strongheart must have been to Larry Trimble. A consummate canine actor, Orph sank his teeth into whatever his role called for, sometimes literally. With a towering talent that surpassed and superseded scripting and directing, he could strike terror in hearts with a boot-quaking show of strength, or make souls tremble with a finely nuanced display of heartfelt (and heartrending) emotions.

Orph came to me as a very small pup to be trained for a very big role.

German Shepherds had always been my breed of choice, and Orph was the choicest of the choice. His conformation and character were of outstanding pedigree, and he had high intelligence. But he also had something beyond intelligence. He seemed to have a remarkable sense of self: an understanding of who he was, his place in my life, his relationship with me personally, as a dog, and his relationship with me professionally, as an actor. He savored his personal life, relished his professional life, and, understanding the difference, flourished in both.

But, even beyond that, Orph also seemed to have an understanding of others around him (other animals, as well as people) and their relationships not just to him, but to one another, outside himself. Orph even, I would go so far to venture, seemed to ruminate on his place in the universe. Orph wasn't just inordinately smart, he was inordinately thoughtful. Indeed, it might not be out of line to say that Orph had an added spirituality to his canine countenance, that he seemed to subscribe to the loftier ideals we mistakenly think only human beings can aspire to.

But whatever that extra something was, which words cannot capture, Orph captured the hearts of those who knew him and selflessly surrendered his heart. He gave his heart -- his all -- to his family of humans and other StarPets, and especially to my wolf, Mariah. He was gentle with schoolchildren and senior citizens, in his work in humane education and pet therapy. And, of course, he struck a chord with film and television audiences everywhere. Indeed, like Strongheart, Orph never gave anything less than his entire heart, his absolute best.

Whether he worked in film, television, commercials, or print ads, he always gave his all. He came on like gangbusters on the Late Show with David Letterman, with an inspired comic turn as a canine "bouncer" who, in a reversal of refusing entry to "average" Joes into trendy, hard-to-get-into celebrity night spots, refused to let Letterman audience members out of the studio! And in a series of TV commercials and public-service announcements sponsored by Purina pet food promoting responsible pet ownership, Orph's poignant performance left even his costar, the gruff Ed Asner, visibly moved.

Like Strongheart with Larry Trimble, Orph not only shared my life, he would actually come to define my life. I acquired him for a specific acting job, a role that would require not only a great deal of versatility, with a multitude of emotions and actions, but a singular defining and charismatic presence. When I chose Orph for the role, I thought he could do it; when I began to work with him, I soon knew he could do it.

Orph was chosen for the starring role in the screen adaptation of award-winning dog writer Jerry Mundis's acclaimed novel Dogs. In an emotionally and physically demanding role, Orph portrayed Orphan -- a scientifically conceived "Super Dog." Rescued from the laboratory and evil scientists by a secret group of caring children, Orph, with the kids in tow, embarks on a superdog life of detective work and derring-do -- rescuing people and other animals from the clutches of evil, saving them from misfortune, and averting tragedy.

Orph portrayed Orphan (he was named for his character in the film) magnificently. At an age when most dogs' talents are barely in bud, and still require careful nurturing, Orph's wide-ranging talents were already in full bloom.

Unfortunately, the project never came to fruition. Midway through shooting, the production was beset by unforeseen and, ultimately, insurmountable problems. Completion, let alone distribution, was not to be.

But perhaps the loss of the movie was fate's way of freeing Orph for the role of a lifetime -- the role he was destined to play -- to "costar" with my wolf, Mariah, and to help me "direct" her.

Copyright © 2005 by Bashkim Dibra

Continues...

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Excerpted from StarPet by Bash Dibra Copyright © 2005 by Bash Dibra.
Excerpted by permission.
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