Earlier this week I saw on our very own Studio City Patch that Friday was “This is one of the main American holidays behind the problem of dachshund fur getting into your laptop. But Diane read it wrong. She must have thought the story said: “Make Your Dog Work Today,” because all of sudden on Friday morning she told me I had to write the column for today, and I had to do it on deadline which means right before it runs!
Here’s why this happened to me, Heidi: Diane was all set for us to do a phone interview with Uggie, the famous Jack Russell terrier who starred in the silent movie The Artist. She had talked to Uggie’s peoples and everything. I had already met Uggie in the spring when I was the only dog reporter in the world covering the , so Uggie wanted to talk to me. Plus I know how to speak, which is excellent for interviews. We were going to talk about Uggie’s big news: At age 10, Uggie is retiring from acting to write his memoirs.
We were going to write about these big events coming up on Monday to celebrate Uggie’s retirement: First of all, The Artist is coming out on Blu-Ray and DVD on Tuesday so Uggie can watch himself not barking at home. Then on Monday, at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, there will be a fancy retirement party for Uggie, almost as nice as . And at the party, Uggie will put his paws in cement outside like the people stars! There are only two other dogs with their paw prints in that famous place, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.
Like Uggie, I am 10 but I am not retired from being an actress. Just like Diane is not retired from being a writer even though in dog years, she’d be dead.
We can’t go to Uggie’s party because of some other things in our lives, but we thought we still could talk about it before it happened. But the interview never got set up, so Diane got frustrated and told me I’d have to be a real journalist and think of another idea pronto. I was kind of worried at first, then I realized because I am a very smart dog that we have a Walk of Fame right here in Studio City, and we could go to there instead of my interview!
The Patch already writes about the SC Walk of Fame, but not from street-level like me. Our Walk of Fame doesn’t have people or dogs or cats either make messy footprints in cement, but they have these nice squares in the sidewalk that commemorate different TV shows, everybody in each one, not just one person. And the Patch writes about a different square, every week! That is good. Plus squares are easier to draw than stars, although I can see why they don’t use them in Hollywood because then they would be The Hollywood Squares.
(Guess what, there’s this other special thing we do here in the SC in some places, people put their names in front of different trees on little plaques. I like it. It is called dedication and it means members of that family can pee on that tree whenever they want, forever).
I decided that Diane and I should find a Walk of Fame square that means a lot for dogs. So we went online to look o the Studio City Improvement Association website and found that, Square #200 out of 296 was for The Adventures of Rex and Rinty, a 12-episode series released in 1935, a very long-ago year that marks the beginning of time. And even though we didn’t know how to start looking for Square #200, we just pulled into this empty parking space on Ventura Place and by chance we were right at Square #213! I did the math and figured out if we kept walking toward the smaller numbers we would get to #200 very fast.
And there it was, right outside the restaurant, where all kinds of people not just Indians eat delicious Indian food for lunch and dinner. Diane took pictures of me there with the star, where I’ll bet people thought I was Rinty from 1935. That was fun and I met nice peoples who were out walking and wanted to know if I am a pure German shepherd or a mix. I am a rescue so we are not sure.
I would like to have a famous square of my own, but I guess to get on the Studio City Walk of Fame I have to do a TV show that is all about me. I am not retiring, so I will probably get one someday. I will also produce it and hire my dog friends to write it and my people friends to go get bottled water for everyone on the set. And if not, maybe one day I will at least get my own tree.
