He Used to Herd Sheep, Now He Does Lunch

After a day like Wednesday, he’ll probably start calling himself Michael.

Mike the Dog stamped his border-collie paws into wet cement, and brought out more cameras than George Burns got for his latest star (he has three) on the Hollywood sidewalk.

But of course, Mike has more hair.

The runaway dog star of the current film “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” about what happens when Skid Row meets Rodeo Drive, showed up Wednesday at the Tail O’ the Pup hot dog restaurant, a bit of classically tacky local architecture, to make his mark in a more durable medium: concrete.

Restaurant owner Eddie Blake, more unnerved by the horde of photographers than the dog was, said Mike was “the first dog to be immoralized in cement.”

From his humble beginnings herding sheep, Mike has gone Hollywood--or rather, Hollywood came to Mike, the dog who has his own stunt double.

All the Beautiful Canines were waiting: a bull terrier named Sparky, in a bow tie; Benji, in an orange director’s chair; Lassie VII--whose namesake put paw prints in Mann’s Chinese Theater cement back when it was Grauman’s, and who is the only animal with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Air-Conditioned Limo

Then, from an air-conditioned Cadillac limo--whose driver admitted that Mike was less trouble than some two-legged celebrities--Mike sprang out to meet his public, including Gloria Nordstrom, who had driven from Glendale so her dog could see him.

“Mike is his idol,” laughed Nordstrom, as her Australian shepherd, Digger, nosed at hot dog remnants.

After one misstep, Mike pressed his front paws squarely into the gray goop. As his owner-trainer, Clint Rowe, scratched a message into the square, Mike sniffed the tail of a Yorkshire terrier, then went through his Stanislavsky paces for cameramen, waving, leaping, barking, and giving a Hollywood air-kiss to his host, Blake.

Then he was back in the limo to shop Rodeo Drive for a TV entertainment-magazine show.

“I’ve never seen a Gucci,” said the cowboy-booted Rowe, ruefully. “Someone had to tell me what it is.”

Mike wasn’t the only top dog there Wednesday.

“There’s no bigger fan of Benji than me, seriously, in the whole world, “ gushed a woman in a Flintstones T-shirt. “Can I shake his hand?”

And from his stroller, 2-year-old Christopher Jermaeus, unswayed by a pretty new muzzle, knew a star when he saw one: “Lassie!” he chortled. “Lassie!”