National Geographic: Those Wonderful Dogs Page #4

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with a calming effect on the horses

The regal chow chow boasts a

in China as hunter and guard

For centuries dogs

have helped man hunt

Today, we have made

them highly specialized

Pointers only point nose high,

body frozen in place

And retrievers only retrieve

joyfully leaping into even frigid

waters to bring back their quarry

From predatory

wild animals we have created

regardless of breed

the most adaptable and sociable

of all domesticated animals

It is not precisely known when

we first put dogs

to work as entertainers

but one of the most famous

adored by countless millions, is Lassie

Bob Weatherwax,

son of the original Lassie trainer

is no preparing the seventh generation

Lassie for an upcoming television series

To get the seven dogs who have

actually appeared on the screen

Bob and Rudd Weatherwax had to

breed more than

coloration, intelligence

and temperament

On screen, the Lassie character

has always been a female

but in reality all Lassies have

been male collies

because males tend to have a more

luxuriant coat and greater stamina

The Lassie legend began in the 1940s

with a dog named Pal

"Originally Lassie... MGM

had their own collie to do Lassie

It was a female dog, which is what

Eric Knight wrote

the story around because it had to

have puppies

And my father's dog was

hired as a double dog

and it was a male

collie called Pal

"And I think he knew that the other dog

couldn't do this performance..."

"...and they had a spot where

Lassie had just

come from Scotland back to England

And he had to cross a river,

and it's a nice scene"

The genius of Rudd Weatherwax came

through in this scene in

which he taught Lassie to look

naturally exhausted

as if it weren't a trick at all

"Come on, crawl"

The mind of the dog,

no mater how bright he may be

cannot conceptualize "look tired"

But the dog can obey a series of

off-screen commands

given in a specific order that result

in the tired look the audience sees

"Speak. Stay, stay.

That's the boy. Stay"

Compared to many dogs that bring

a large measure of instinct to

their work

dog actors start

out as a blank slate

Because they are intelligent

they are capable of learning

The motivation to learn

the willingness to behave

in such un-doglike ways

is based simply on the

dog's desire for human praise

"Dog is man's best friend'

I figure the most domesticated

of all animals and they want

to please us

They want to be with man

It's like A for effort'

they'll give you that effort

"All right, come on!

Up! up! All right

come on over here,

come on

All right, take a bow"

The earth's ice-locked polar

regions could

never have been explored without dogs

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