Retro : Old ‘Dog,’ New Tricks

Tubs, one of the stars of “The Shaggy Dog,” is sitting behind the driver’s seat of an old hot rod posing for publicity photos. But the shoot isn’t going well.

The Old English sheep dog doesn’t mean to be difficult. It’s just that his big hairy paws keep slipping off the steering wheel.

Trainer Joe Camp walks over and puts the paws of the good-natured Tubs back on the wheel, and the photographer continues. When the session ends, Tubs relaxes in the shade with a huge bowl of fresh water.

“They have certain limitations,” Camp says of the breed. “They don’t see as well (as other dogs) because of all of the hair in their eyes. Same thing with all the hair over their ears. They don’t hear as well. So a lot of times you are doing a lot of shouting and waving to get their attention, which makes it real difficult for the actors. Everybody has kind of put them down as being not the brightest dogs, but as working dogs they do pretty well.”

Well, the breed that made a big splash in its 1965-67 “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” TV run (who can forget Ladadog?) is definitely working again in Hollywood. A remake of Disney’s “The Shaggy Dog” premieres Saturday on “The ABC Family Movie.”

The classic 1959 film, about a teen-age boy who becomes a sheep dog thanks to an ancient spell, stars Tommy Kirk, Fred MacMurray, Annette Funicello and Kevin Corcoran. The new version stars Scott Weinger (“Full House”) as 16-year-old science whiz Wilby Daniels, Ed Begley Jr. as his father, Sharon Lawrence as his mother, and Natasha Gregson Wagner as the girl next door.

Four dogs--Tubs, Rufus, his father Hastings and Josh--all play the title character.

“We decided we were going to go for a very traditional approach to this and keep some of that small-town America (that was in the original),’ says executive producer George Zaloom. “We kept the same type of car. We kept the idea of the back lot. The Disney back lot is gone, but we shot it up on Colonial Street at Universal Studios.”

Gone, though, is the outdated Cold War subplot from the original. “The entire spy subplot doesn’t really work today because there is no such thing as the Soviet Union,” Zaloom says. This time around, Wilby, the dog, overhears a plot for a jewel heist and Wilby, the human, tries to save the day.

The special effects in the ABC film are far more sophisticated than they were 35 years ago, especially scenes in which Wilby transforms into the dog.

“In the old days there were a bunch of cheesy dissolves,” Zaloom explains. “It looked like a werewolf. Now we can use computerized morphs. I think they’ll look pretty good because we are spending a lot of money. And the same thing with the talking dog. We really developed this great talking-dog head.

“We were hoping to get a real talking dog but we couldn’t afford that,” Zaloom adds, laughing. “They eat a lot of dog food!”

Weinger had to endure several hours in the makeup chair to become a dog. “They apply each section of hair one piece at a time,” he says with a moan. “You have to do it to your arms and your face and your ears. And then they have to glue strips of latex to your face and your nose and stuff. We did it until 5 in the morning one Friday night.”

The young actor pauses and smiles: “But that’s the thing an artist does when he is really dedicated to his work!”

Camp spent seven weeks training the dogs. “For the amount of work we are doing, that is plenty of time,” Camp says. “With the talking heads and different suits as good as they are today, they have taken a lot of pressure off of us.”

The dogs, he says, can duplicate one another’s tricks. “In case one gets tired, he can also take over and do some of the behaviors,” Camp says. “Some of the dogs are more adept at certain things. Rufus and Tubs do most of the work, with Rufus, a young 1 1/2-year-old dog, doing most of the stress and strain kind of things, running and jumping. Tubs is a veteran and has more of a stage presence.”

The appeal of these shaggy dogs, Camp believes, lies in the fact that they “have a certain comicality about them. They look like they are people in baggy, shaggy pants when they walk. The dogs are very gentle dogs.”

“The Shaggy Dog” premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. on ABC.