Honour Uggie By Adopting A Great Animal Friend
A Short Note from Doug Draper
As you who’ve been following Niagara At Large for the past couple of years may know, we have a very soft spot in our hearts for our animal friends here.
Uggie at least made the red carpet this past year for his stellar performance in ‘The Artist’.
So this time, let’s give two thumbs up and all the applause we’ve ever heard mustered in a theatre for Uggie, the incredible canine co-star of this past year’s Academy Award-winning film, ‘The Artist’
In my books, and as someone who was swept away with the magic of this wonderful film in a theatre this past winter in Buffalo, New York, this remarkable pooch should have been nominated for an Academy Award himself – not that the Academy yet has the humanity to create a category for animal actors.
But the main thing to remember about Uggie, who is now retiring from the movie business, but not before the Jack Russell terrier was the first canine or any other animal to have his paw prints immortalized this June on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is that he was adopted. That is right. He was adopted from a pound and possibly saved from being “put down,” as they say, in one of those places.
“He’s adopted (and) he made it,” said his friend and trainer Omar Van Muller as Uggie after Uggie had his paws imprinted in cement. “If you guys can adopt a dog, even if they don’t make it on the big screen, they’ll be big stars at your house.”
Uggie has his prints place in a Hollywood ‘Walk of Fame’ that also include the prints of Clark Gable, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, and others. Not bad for a dog from the pound.
That is a wonderful message animal companions like Uggie, who also starred in such films as ‘Water for Elephants’, can bring us.
Our home here in Niagara At Large land has been blessed with cats from humane societies and animal shelters, and they have always proved to be among the best friends the humans living in our home have ever had.
So in honour of Uggie, give every consideration to adopting a dog or cat from your local humane society or animal shelter. They are there, waiting for you to give them a hug and take them home.
By the way, if you haven’t seen The Artist, it is being released on DVD and related formats late this June. If you are into spending a few hours in front of a screen, you can’t do much better than watching this. And Uggie does give an Academy Award-winning performance.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post below, remembering that we only post comments by individuals who are also willing to share their first and last name.)
Niagara At Large 
thanks for that important message Doug, but not all animals who play in films are so lucky. the elephants in “Water for Elephants” endured a lot of negative reinforcement to perform. Ask someone like Pat Derby, herself an animal trainer at one point … who says that there is no way to train an elephant with kindness …it is a brutish business. She now runs PAWS (Sanctuary) in the U.S. where, hopefully,by the way the 3 Toronto Zoo elephants will be heading. They have acres & acres of land to roam and Pat Derby relies heavily on hands off practice for the elephants retired there…unlike many zoos, and places that might rent elephants for theatre, commercials or films where elephants are usually tethered for most of their lives and their space is reduced to a miniscule amount of the land that they might otherwise roam in the wild.
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