Dog Tired

By Mayana Slobodian

Friday March 16, 2007

The radio waves were ablaze this morning with outrage regarding the death of two puppies. The dogs, employed in the local filming of Snow Buddies, were taken from their mommy puppy too early, were mistreated, and expired prematurely. It turns out this film has several dogs on the payroll, and many of them are sick. It also turns out that Snow Buddies is the next in the long line of sequels to the 1997 smash hit Air Bud, the movie that has spawned an animal film cottage industry in Vancouver.

Our town has been home to at least five Air Bud films, giving football, soccer, baseball, volleyball and, of course, basketball-playing Golden Retrievers a place to rest their over-worked paws for the last decade. This next installation is directed by filmmaker Robert Vince, the man behind the Air Bud series, having written, produced and directed most of them. Vince is also the creator of a similar animals-who-play franchise— MVP: Most Valuable Primate, along with its follow-ups MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate and MXP: Most Extreme Primate.

As with everything, the stakes have been constantly upped to keep the 8-year-old audience clinging to the edge of their chesterfields. Surely Snow Buddies will be no different, and living rooms across the nation will ring with “I can’t believe that dog is actually skiing!” Given that Vince has spent the last ten years creatively compensating for the lack of thumbs on chimps and dogs, we shouldn’t be too shocked that a few paws have been stepped on along the way.

Judging by the way the story drowned out the infanticide and spousal murder currently in the news, this newborn puppy scandal will probably end up making things a little harder for people like Vince in the animal crossover genre. It’s like Air Bud strikes back. But apparently that already happened, in the volleyball-themed fifth sequel. Oh wait, that was Spikes Back.