A Dog and Pony Show

Woof met hoof at Universal Studios on Wednesday when Ragtime, the embattled mini-stallion of Thousand Oaks, pranced with Lassie in a true “dog and pony show.”

Ragtime’s fame, won in a long legal battle against eviction from the Ventura County city, led to a role in a revival of the TV series starring the perennially super-intelligent collie.

“Ragtime’s made the big time,” Lassie’s publicist, Cliff Dektar, said Wednesday after an episode featuring the 27-inch-tall horse was shot at Universal Studios.

In the program, to be aired after Thanksgiving, Ragtime plays Tinker, a tiny horse wrongfully accused of digging up a garden and almost taken away. “Lassie saves the day,” as Dektar put it, by proving that it was the complainer’s own poodle who tore up her flowers while trying to bury a trinket.

“Not unlike the complaining people in Thousand Oaks,” Dektar said, giving his version of the story line.

Residential Area

In real life, the gray-and-white steed belonging to Patty Fairchild first drew headlines more than two years ago when neighbors questioned Ragtime’s presence in a residential area, and city officials tried to have the animal removed.

Whimsy triumphed earlier this month when a Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled in Ragtime’s favor, holding that the 177-pound horse is a household pet and not a barnyard animal, apparently ending continued eviction efforts by the Oakbrook Village Homeowners Assn. and a $40,000 legal battle for Fairchild.

The timing of the decision was coincidental to the filming of “Lassie,” according to Dektar, who said the show’s executive producer had already read about the little horse and decided to include him in an episode.

Ragtime celebrated his new stardom by kicking up his heels and “playfully nipping” his fellow actors and stagehands, Dektar said.