Puppy love or pooch jealousy?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2014 (4162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the kind of disturbing news no animal lover ever wants to hear.

There’s no easy way to say it, so we’ll just blurt it out — Paris Hilton’s brand new Canadian dog is making the famed socialite’s six other pet pooches jealous.

According to gripping news reports this week, the 33-year-old hotel heiress recently plunked down a hefty $13,000 to buy a tiny breed of dog known as a micro teacup Pomeranian from Betty’s Tea Cup Yorkies, a Calgary breeder.

Breathless news items state the Calgary-bred pup stands just over five centimetres tall, has a fluffy white coat of fur, a flat face and is expected to grow to twice its current weight of 329 grams (about 11.6 ounces).

The tragic news is the pint-sized pup, formerly known as “Mr. Amazing” and now dubbed “Prince,” is facing some back biting because Hilton’s other canine companions feel the newcomer’s getting too much face time in her purse.

Hilton told Britain’s MailOnline: “They are jealous because I’m taking Prince everywhere these days. Peter Pan is especially upset because I used to take him everywhere. He was the top dog. So there are some sad feelings there.

“Prince is just the new one, so he is getting the most attention. I give them all attention… I think Peter Pan might want some more trips out, so I will work that in.”

On that upbeat note, we know some amazing mutts that Paris’s pooches probably should be jealous of, including the following famous five:

 

5) The Littlest Hobo — Our passport would likely be revoked if we didn’t kick off this list with a Canadian icon. Like most people in the True North, we get misty-eyed (Sniff!) when we hear the lyrics — “There’s a voice that keeps on calling me/Down the road is where I’ll always be” — to Maybe Tomorrow, the impossible-to-forget theme song from arguably the most Canadian TV series this side of The Beachcombers. For you young people out there, Hobo was a German shepherd featured in a TV series that first aired from 1963-65, then was remade and aired for six seasons (1979-1985) on CTV. Almost every episode was identical — a mysterious, super intelligent, ownerless dog wanders into town, befriends and helps someone who is down on their luck, then, his job done by episode’s end, declines to become the pet of the people he has helped and trots off into the sunset to resume his cross-country drifting. The two series were based on an American film of the same name. The main star was a dog named London, one of several German shepherds trained by breeder Chuck Eisenmann. Earlier this year, Maclean’s magazine ran a list entitled 10 Things The Littlest Hobo Did That A Dog Shouldn’t Be Able To Do (Can Lassie Do This?) Didn’t Think So that included: “1) Deliver antidote to a poisoned child via parachute; 3) Prove the sasquatch was a guy in a gorilla suit; and 7) Break an evil therapist’s hypnotic spell on a supermodel, thereby foiling a dastardly plot to let another girl get her modelling job.” Good dog, Hobo, good dog!

 

4) Toto — Hands up everyone who was freaked out during that scene in The Wizard of Oz when the Wicked Witch of the West threatens Dorothy by snarling: “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!” OK, that’s what we thought. Safe to say many of us were more worried about Toto’s safety than Dorothy’s. In L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, Toto was a little black boy dog. In the movie, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, Toto was portrayed by a female brindle Cairn Terrier whose real name was Terry. According to the website Neatorama, Terry’s owner was a guy named Carl Spitz, who ran the Hollywood Dog Training School and adopted the furry star after her original owner left her to be trained but never returned. Terry appeared in up to 16 films, but Oz was the only one in which she got a screen credit. Oz was almost the last film appearance for Terry, who did her own stunts. One of the Winkie guards in the film accidentally stepped on her, breaking her foot, and Terry had to spend two weeks recuperating at Judy Garland’s house. In fact, Garland reportedly wanted to adopt her tiny co-star, but Spitz refused. The pup reportedly received a $125 weekly salary, over twice as much as the Singer Midgets were paid for playing the Munchkins. In 1942, three years after the movie premiered and three years before her death, Terry’s name was officially changed to Toto. She can’t be blamed for the 1970s rock band Toto.

3) Rin Tin Tin — If you weren’t alive in the 1950s, when one of our favourite TV series of all time, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, came out, we feel sorry for you. The cool thing is Rin Tin Tin was a real dog, a pup that was rescued from a bombed-out kennel in France during the First World War by an American corporal named Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him “Rinty.” After the war, according to online sources, Duncan trained his German shepherd pal and helped him land small roles in a couple of silent films. The dog’s first big break came in 1922 when he replaced a camera-shy wolf in The Man From Hell’s River. His first starring role was in the box office smash Where the North Begins, a film credited with bringing Warner Bros. back from bankruptcy. Studio insiders started referring to Rin Tin Tin as “the mortgage lifter,” and he went on to star in 27 movies. In 1929, the Hollywood hound famously received the most votes for the first Academy Award for Best Actor, but the academy decided it should go to a human, the German actor Emil Jannings. The dog was provided with a private chef who prepared daily lunches of tenderloin, and the studio maintained 18 stand-ins to reduce the stress on their star. When he died in 1932, his name was handed down to a host of related shepherds, none of which had his acting chops.

2) Lassie — What we are talking about here is arguably the most famous living, breathing dog in history. They simply didn’t come any smarter than Lassie. Unfortunately, her fictional family featured the dumbest people on the face of the planet. We know this because we adored the Emmy-winning 1950s TV series Lassie, every episode of which featured the genius collie rescuing Timmy after he fell down a well, or pulling grandpa out from under an overturned piece of farm equipment, then spending the evening doing the family’s tax returns. Wikipedia says the fictional character was created by English-American author Eric Knight in Lassie Come Home, first published as a short story in 1938, then as a novel in 1940. In 1943, it became a feature film starring Elizabeth Taylor. The original film Lassie was a male dog, a Rough Collie named “Pal,” who appeared as Lassie in six other MGM features. Ten generations of Pal’s descendants have played this remarkable collie in film and on TV. According to Babble.com’s list of the 15 most famous dogs in history, the character Lassie has always been female, but she has only been portrayed on screen by male Collies, who have a thicker coat in summer, look more Collie-ish on TV, and are larger, meaning child actors can play alongside them for longer periods before outgrowing their co-stars. In 2005, the showbiz journal Variety named Lassie one of the “100 icons of the Century,” the only animal star to make the list.

 

1) Snoopy — Why is this fictional beagle the top dog on our list? Well, can you think of any other canine that has an Apollo lunar module, a U.S. Air Force bomber, three MetLife airships, an Arizona geological formation and a remotely operated underwater vehicle named after it? No? We didn’t think so. Snoopy is easily the most recognized dog around the world. When he first appeared in Charles M. Schulz’s iconic Peanuts comic strip on Oct. 4. 1950, Snoopy was a traditional dog. The silence ended on March 16, 1952, when he began to verbalize his quirky ideas in thought balloons. Over the years, he has transformed into the root beer-loving, sunglasses-wearing, bird-befriending First World War flying ace who, when he is not battling the Red Baron, sits atop his doghouse composing novels that always begin with: “It was a dark and stormy night.” He almost wasn’t called Snoopy at all. Schulz initially dubbed him “Sniffy,” but reversed gear when he learned that name was used in a different strip, so he fell back on a suggestion his mother once offered (the affectionate Norwegian term “Snuppe”) for the family dog. In 1960, Snoopy’s lovable loser owner, Charlie Brown, opined: “Beagles on the grass, alas.” Fired back Snoopy: “I ain’t no stupid beagle!” And he ain’t. He’s possibly the most recognizable comic character in history. Chirps list25.com: “This fictional beagle may be more than 50 years old, but in truth he’s going to live 50 more years considering his extensive fame and amazingly huge following.”

 

Call us biased, but we think any of the iconic dogs on our list are worthy of being role models for Paris Hilton’s pack of pampered pets. We have more to say on this topic, but we have to run, because (bad word) Timmy has fallen in the quicksand again.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca