Tag Archives: pets

The Friend, A Movie Well Worth the Wait

The moment I learned that the National Book Award for fiction winner centered on a Great Dane, I was out of my home and on my way to a bookstore for a copy of “The Friend.” The 2018 book by Sigrid Nunex has been described as a story of love and loss and also about grief as experienced both by human and animal survivors. It spoke to me in any number of ways. 

Not only am I crazy about Great Danes, but they often figure prominently in my annual Christmas letters to friends and family. At a recent holiday party hosted by former neighbors who had known only my last dog, Lotte, I was greeted with the words: “Did you really have nine Great Danes?”  “Not all at once,” I assured them.

I had to chuckle to myself at the horror of neighbors thinking that someone might move in with nine giant dogs! As it is, I have moved to a pretty small apartment with a size limit to the dogs that are not allowed. This of course precludes Great Danes, the breed known for sleeping away great swaths of their days. Many small, yippy dogs are allowed (although, fortunately, most are sweet and mostly quiet). On some occasions, though, I do wish I’d recorded one of our Great Dane’s deep-throated barks to quiet incessant yipping. Just open a window and push the play button “WOOF!” It worked in real life, trust me. Like a grumpy old man whose mid-day nap has been interrupted.

Obviously, I devoured Nunex’s book and purchased additional copies to give as gifts. Once I’d learned a movie was in the works, I made a pest of myself to all family members and friends who might have known our dogs down through the years, sending snippets of information about the film’s progress.

Aiding me in my obsession about “The Friend”: Nick Paumgarten’s richly detailed story in The New Yorker. 

Two cinematographers, David Siegel and Scott McGhee, partners in more than 30 years of movie making, reacted to “The Friend” much as I had. But in their case, because they are movie makers, they moved quickly to secure the movie rights from the author, inviting her out for coffee and discussions that resulted in a signed contract and an intensive search for a star, the dog to play the part of the grieving animal. 

They turned to a world-renowned animal trainer, Bill Berloni whose credits include dogs and other animals we’ve all loved and cried over in movie roles. Berloni’s first demand was “change the breed of dog.” “Great Danes,” he said, “are big and dumb, lazy and impossible to train.” The two moviemakers and all the others involved in the production said “no;” the breed of the dog is central to the story. The dog stayed.

Berloni and the others traveled to meet dogs in many states until their auditions’ file had more than 30 headshots of prospects. One dog from Anchorage was auditioned during a visit to New York for the Westminster Kennel Club show.                                                                                            

Ultimately, Berloni found the perfect Dane to play the lead dog, Apollo. The dog star was a Great Dane named Bing, who not only landed the role, he changed the trainer’s opinion of the breed. “Great Danes are intelligent and sensitive,” he told the producers. “And moreover, if you don’t use this one, I’m going to represent him.”                                                                                          

A friend who has retired to the northwestern United States often sends me articles that include mention of the breed and I was hardly surprised when his clipping of the same New Yorker article arrived.  I thanked my friend and said, ‘I’m way ahead of you this time, but isn’t it a wonderful piece?” I placed his copy of the New Yorker clipping next to mine and said “I can’t wait for the movie.” 

But wait I did, along with many other dog lovers as scheduling conflicts and then the actors’ strike delayed the movie again and again. As I followed the progress, I also peppered friends with quotes from people involved with the production. (“Being seen with a dog like this is like being seen with a rock star.”)

Four years went by before progress on the picture resumed. Bing was now six years old. Nunez was not involved in making the film but was nevertheless anxious about whether the big dog would hang in long enough to participate. Great Danes have many wonderful qualities, but longevity is not among them. The New Yorker article cites an average lifespan for a Dane as eight years. When we started our Great Dane obsession in the early 1960s, the stated average life span was seven years. And with the experience of living with nine of them, I can say that’s about right. We had one that lived past 10 years, but most were with us for far less time. It’s heartbreaking, but Great Danes are worth it. 

Both of my daughters grew up with Great Danes, and of course, I hoped they’d get to see a film with a real Great Dane, not a cartoon version – or a cartoonish version, like the 2002 “Scooby-Doo” film. Ed and I went to see that one and were the only adults in the theater not accompanied by children. I hated it. I would have walked out — but I didn’t want to spoil the experience for the kids in the audience. I remember the film manipulates the dog’s mouth somehow so it seems as if he is speaking. It was creepy and dumb. 

And then finally, earlier this year, “The Friend” was released in theaters. I went to see the film with one of my daughters — and loved every minute of it. Again, I was on a mission to encourage everyone to also go see the film. But movies don’t stick around in the theaters as long as they used to. In what seemed like no time, “The Friend” was no longer on the big screen. But  then, wonder of wonders, I saw a notice that Netflix has “The Friend.” Finally!

I encourage you to watch “The Friend.” I will be watching it again.

Note about the art: At the top of the page, you will see my beloved Great Dane bookends (credited by the artist, Louise Peterson, as “Claynines”). We collected a lot of Great Dane art over the years — including several sculptures by Peterson (you can find her website here: www.danesculptor.com). A friend recently tried to count all the Great Dane art (including everything from sculptures and paintings to calendars and fridge magnets) in my apartment. I think she got to 80, but might have missed a few. After I saw “The Friend,” I was pleased to see one of my Dane figurines had similar black-and-white coloring as Bing.

My Dog Is GREA-A-A-T!

Quality Times

“That’s a GREA-A-A-T Dane!” the smiling young man said as we passed on the street, doing a perfect imitation of Tony the Tiger from the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes® commercials. “Thank you!” I called after him.

That was a new one for my 140-pound dog. Walking Lotte around the neighborhood, I hear all sorts of comments. Lots of horse-related ones: “Nice horse you got there.” “Got a saddle for that thing?” One day recently when Lotte was being particularly lethargic and trailing behind me, a guy offered “Your horse is following you.” A while back we passed a group of Latino workmen on break outside a construction site. “Chihuahua” one called out. “Grande Chihuahua,” I replied, thereby exhausting my entire Spanish vocabulary. (What is someone who studied French for six years doing in a city that is more than 36 percent Spanish-speaking?)

Some folks call her Marmaduke. “Lady Marmaduke,” I remind them. Children sometimes make reference to Scooby-Do. “Hi Big Guy,” a person might say. “Girl!” I tell them. “Oh sorry about that.” It’s okay. I understand that people naturally assume a dog this big just must be male. Occasionally I tell them it’s a lazy person’s dog: You don’t have to bend down to pet her.

Lotte is our ninth Great Dane. There are several reasons for this: We have been at it for a long time, Great Danes are not long-lived, and we are people who like consistency (all but one of our cars in 54 years have been Volkswagens).

“Of course you’ll get another Great Dane,” our New York daughter said when we were ready for a new dog. “It’s part of your image.” Well, at least it gives us identity. When we run into people unaccompanied by our dog and are greeted by blank stares, we can always remind them, “The people with the Great Dane.” “Oh yes,” they’ll reply. It’s a comfort to know we’re not complete ciphers.

If you’d like to know more about Great Danes and why anyone would own nine of them, I’ve put my book Great Dane in the Morning up on this website . It’s the story, with pictures, of each and every one of them. They were all GREA-A-A-T!

Sculpture: “Quality Times” by Louise Peterson

Felines Non Grata?

archy & cleo

Wildlife writer Richard Conniff foresees a day when having an outdoor cat will be as socially unacceptable as smoking in the office or not picking up after your dog. The reason? Cats are decimating the wild bird population in startlingly high numbers.

In an article titled “The Evil of the Outdoor Cat” appearing in The New York Times, Conniff states that already cats have caused or contributed to the extinction of 33 species of birds, mostly on islands once cats were introduced. But on the mainland, particularly in this country’s lower 48 states, the intensification of agriculture coupled with expanding suburban and urban areas have shrunk spaces for wildlife to “parks and forgotten scraps of land.” Sharing these spaces, he says, “is a growing population of about 84 million owned cats and anywhere from 30 to 84 million feral or stray cats.” Federal researchers, he says, “recently estimated that free-ranging cats killed about 2.4 billion birds annually in the lower 48 states,” along with 12.3 billion small mammals and about 650 million reptiles and amphibians. Some endangered species are being pushed toward extinction.

Adding to Conniff’s case against outdoor cats is the assertion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that cats are three to four times more likely than dogs to carry rabies. They also “share many other parasites or infectious microbes with humans,” Conniff writes, including one particularly insidious parasite, toxoplasmosis, that lodges in the brain and has been linked to neurological impairments, depression, blindness and birth defects.

None of those reasons is why my family has tried to keep our cats indoors. It is heartbreaking to have to scrape up from the street a cat that’s been hit by a car while the dog is looking out the window whimpering (and you’re thankful the children were not home at the time). Perhaps even more heartbreaking is to have a cat just disappear one day, leaving you with an imagination whirling with possible scenarios: coyote? hawk? bobcat? vicious dog?

I was determined that Archy and Cleo, a half-Siamese brother-sister duo, would be indoor cats when we obtained them from a couple of well-meaning cat ladies (they’d seen a box marked “free kittens” and wanted a say in where they’d end up). Living in New Jersey at the time, we succeeded halfway with the indoor regimen. Cleo, a particularly tiny thing her entire life, was happy to live that life indoors, as was Archy as long it was cold outside. But once the weather turned warm, he’d stand at the door and let loose that ear-piercing Siamese howl until, in desperation, you’d relent. “Oh, go ahead. Just stop the noise.”

He continued his seasonal routine until we moved to Los Angeles where our house has a little greenhouse-like enclosure off the master bedroom. We had a cat door cut into the wall and placed the litter box and a basket of cat toys out there. Suddenly, the cats were outside but not, and Archy lived contentedly until kidney failure felled him at age 18. Cleo, the runt of her litter, who rarely spent a moment outside, died this past year at age 22  ̶  104 in people years. Another seven weeks and she would have made it to 108.

And that’s the biggest reason why all cats should be indoor cats.

Photo: Archy & Cleo