Trading Post Offers More Than Just Bargains : Hobbies: Veteran trainer Moe Di Sesso might have more animals than antiques on his three-acre ranch.

Visitors to Moe Di Sesso’s ranch can bid or barter for everything from handmade Native American crafts to used wet suits. Those with more serious business in mind can watch his pigs play the piano.

It’s hard to tell if there are more antiques or animals on the three-acre Newhall ranch. Di Sesso, 70, opens the iron gates across his driveway on weekends, hoping to lure a few passing motorists into his tiny adobe trading post.

But most of his time is spent working as Hollywood’s oldest active animal trainer.

The quick-witted New Jersey native says he grew up in the woods and made pets out of the wildlife there by studying their habits. In his 20s, he became a sign painter--even though he couldn’t read or write at the time--and a rodeo trick rider, but training animals has always been his first love.

“I can train ants, or snakes or any damned thing,” he says. “The whole thing is learning the behavior of the animal.”

Di Sesso’s ranch is a step back in time, reflecting his old-fashioned methods that are dying out for newer trends.

A covered wagon with an Indian mannequin inside rests at the entrance of his driveway, with a painted wood sign advertising “Moe’s Trading Post” to the few passing motorists along the Old Road, which parallels the Golden State Freeway through the Newhall Pass.

The wagon became a landmark to thousands of commuters when the road suddenly turned into a major freeway detour after the Northridge earthquake, but Di Sesso says the notoriety hasn’t brought him any new business.

“No, it hasn’t, but now they all say, ‘We’ve passed it many, many times,’ ” he says.

But Di Sesso says the small number of visitors to his store doesn’t bother him--he opened it three years ago as a hobby.

Inside the ranch, a goat stands on the porch of the trading post nibbling away at a chair that has been passed down through five generations. Di Sesso’s wife, Sue, shoos the animal away good-naturedly, seemingly less concerned about the condition of her great-great grandmother’s chair than the fact that her husband sits there on weekends while waiting for visitors.

“We used to have canvas on the wagons, but the goats ate them,” she says, gesturing at what used to be a couple of covered wagons inside the ranch. “(The canvases) were OK at first, but I guess as they got older they got more tender.”

Di Sesso walks down a short hill from his home to the trading post, wearing three turquoise necklaces he made himself and a floral headband to hold back his long black-and-gray hair, which reaches halfway to his waist.

Casually dressed in a patterned white shirt, brown pants and a multicolored vest, he fits a common image of a Native American crafts vendor. But looking at his wrinkled, tanned face indicates there is more heritage there.

His father was Italian, Di Sesso explains. He thinks his mother was Native American, although she died when he was a child, and his stepmother was a Native American.

“I tell everyone I’m a Wopaho,” he adds.

Di Sesso met his wife, Sue, when he was 39 and she 16, and they dated intermittently between his three marriages and her two. They finally married each other three years ago.

“Animals made me money and my wives hated it,” Di Sesso says. “I built this big, fancy compound and they wanted me to build a big, fancy house.”

Sue Di Sesso is no stranger to animals or movie work. She doubled for Sharon Stone “before she became famous” to handle the animal work in the 1989 movie “Scissors.” She says moving to the ranch was second nature.

“I’ve always been around animals,” she says. “It just didn’t seem odd to me at all.”

The inside of the trading post is filled mostly with what visitors would expect: jewelry, feathers, pipes, dream catchers and other Native American crafts. Many items are authentic to tradition, but a few pieces are accented with bright colors and other touches never seen in the Old West.

“I have to make stuff that sells,” Di Sesso admits.

A second glance inside the trading post reveals a bizarre assortment of collectibles such as old record albums, aging kitchen utensils, a punching bag and a rubber alligator.

“I think that one’s a buck and a half,” Sue Di Sesso says, pointing to the alligator and looking questioningly at her husband. “It was probably one of our props.”

All purchases are cash only, but Moe’s is one of the few trading posts left where bartering is still allowed.

“We have people trade jackets for vests and some fur pieces were traded in for necklaces,” Sue Di Sesso says. “One woman traded a decorated cow’s head for a spear.”

The more discerning might notice a glass case near the front door where several museum-quality pieces are stored, such as a hatchet used by Running Bear, an early-19th-Century Native American chief. Moe Di Sesso says the hatchet is probably worth about $3,000, but none of the items in the case are for sale.

The tops of the walls inside the trading post are lined with pictures of animals performing various stunts or posing with celebrities. Casual visitors might never notice them, and although they might spot a few common animals while entering the store, they would likely be stunned to discover the variety of animals behind the rear door of the shop.

Hundreds of cages housing dogs, cats, rats, birds, pigs and other trained animals are lined up in a maze at the base of a hill that rises above the ranch. Di Sesso says the collection is a bit more tame than those of his early days, when he trained lions, wolves and bears--which can become unpredictable under modern movie-making conditions.

“I’m wise now,” he says. “I’m not going to get killed for a lousy buck.”

His animals have appeared in hundreds of movies and television shows since the 1950s and he has won seven Patsy awards--the equivalent of an Oscar among animal trainers.

Di Sesso’s credits include everything from a “bionic dog” that appeared in the 1970s television show “The Bionic Woman” to Annie and Fannie, his miniature pigs who played a special miniature piano this year for the consumer television program “Fight Back.”

“Most of our chickens and roosters play the piano,” Di Sesso adds.

He also takes credit for about 80% of the television commercials that featured animals during the 1980s.

The variety is rare for modern animal trainers, who look for success in the increasingly competitive field by specializing with one animal or breed, Di Sesso adds.

“They’ll train one dog and that dog is fantastic,” he says. “But tell the trainer to do a raccoon and they can’t do it.”

Increased competition means many film and television executives are more interested in price than talent, Di Sesso says. He says he notices modern film shots in which a dog will approach a door and put his mouth on the doorknob as if to open it, and the show immediately cuts to the next scene with the door already open.

“When I did the bionic dog, that dog went up to the door, took that knob and pulled it right off,” he says.

But Di Sesso is content with the business he has, providing animals for shows such as “Murphy Brown” and “Seinfeld.” He says there are enough other longtime business acquaintances who rely on him exclusively, keeping him as busy as he wants.

“There’s a lot of people trying to do things I’ve done in the past, but they’ll never do it,” he says, adding: “When it comes to something tough, they come to me.”

As for the trading post business, Di Sesso always has his “shyster hat” for reluctant customers. The black top hat gives him the look of a used-car salesman and he has the demeanor to match.

“Now me make-um good trade,” he announces with a wicked, wrinkled grin.