a

Jump for joy:

Head trainer

Melissa Harris
works with
Jada outside
Madison
Square
Garden.

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Who let the dogs out?
These canines a!,e stars

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PHOTOS BY ARI MINTZ

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BY FRIII{K I.OVECE

Specicl to Newsdoy

t was a dog day afternoon outside Madison

Square Garden, where
four animal trainers for
"The l0l Dalmatians
Musical" were showing
off their four-legged
charges near the dog

novel "The Hundred and One

Dalmatians"
to the
- s111'slated
Disney movies
that's direct-

ed by Ierry Zaks, with music by

former Styx frontman Dennis

stars'tour bus.
Phoenix was doing an "A to
B" run, as that point-to-point
trained behavior is called.
Bella was demonstrating her
jumps. And Rascal, the puppy
of the group
- welll he was
iust being Rascal, add bolted
from his trainer to $niff at a
metal barrier between West
33rd Street and the Garden
parking lot. A nimble publicist
collared the pooch, a half-step
ahead of the trainer, before the
l-year-old pup decided to seek
fame and fortune in the big
city.
But then, he doesn't have to.

After 22 weeks of playing the

sticks
Appleton, Wis.,
- ys,
you, but also Mfuurewe mean
apolis; Detroit; Atlanta Miami;
Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Indianapolis; and Providence
Rascal and 14 other canine
corps members ioin a human
cast that includes actors in dog
costumes at The Theater at
Madison Square Garden
through April18.
Onstage they sit, rug manipulate levers, pretend to urinate
and basically help bring to life
this musical adaptation of
Dodie Smith's 1956 children's

DeYoung.
Six of the dogs, such as Spittin'Image aka Envy, and Heartbreak Kid aka DX, are registered with the American Kennel Club. The others were stray
or abandoned and come from
shelters or rescue groups, often
having suffered such canine
afflictions as crystals in their
PHOTOS
Check out our
galleries of
the hottest shows

iWffi
"lffiy"clom
,/theater

urine or heartworm.
"When the producers first
called me," says veteran animal
trainer foel Slaven, recalling
how his performance dogs got
involved in a truck-and-bus
tour, unlike the usual stationary shows he helps produceat
the various Busch Gardens,
SeaWorlds and elsewhere, "I
said it ccn be done. Is it likely
to be done? No. How are you
going to travel with dogs to a
different city every week?"
Circuses manage, "but they're
small dogs, and not 15 of them."
After being assured the
animals would be cared for in
a proper manner, Slaven decided "these dogs are some of the
stars of the show, and I said
they have to be treated like
that. And the producers said,
'Well, what do we have to do
to make that happen?"'
Get a pop-star bus, it turned

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like Jada and Bella with trainer, live in a rolling doggy hotel
shelters,
While on tour with "The lOl Dalmatians Musical," 15 dalmatians, many rescued from animat
|

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out. The

15

dogs

the aforemen-

tioned, rounded -out by Bert,

Forks, Frankie, Gracie, Hann4

fadaJackson, Lacy and Stanley
ride and are housed over-

- in a 45-foot-long, 7-footnight

wide, 731/z-foot high tour bus

that, according to company
scuttlebutt, previously rolled the
|onas Brothers from town to
town. Two trainers, with the
f<rur on the tour taking turns, are
with them in the bus each night.
Slaven, a lifelong animal lover
and trainer, is touchy about
takingphotos inside the dogs'
abode. "It's beautiful inside,but
there are kennels. [They're big
enough thatl two dogs can stand
up andwalkaround in them, but
we have seen many times that
somebody will taka a picture
and put it up on the Internet
with a phrase or title under it
that is completely ludicrous."
The dogs outside the bus this

day seem as shiny and buoyant

as bubbles, and their trainers
head Melissa Harris,33, and Ashley Young, 22; Sandy Long,
23;andNicole Sill,28
are all
- show
equally bright-eyed and
a
clear bond with their black-andwhite bundles of energy. Sill
has a biology degree, the rest
psychology, and all worked
with zoos or veterinarians
before joining the SO-plus other

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trainers with Slaven's St.

Cloud, Fla., company.

They play with the dogs, feed
them, do "enrichment time" to
keep the dogs stimulated with
new toys the trainers regularly
build, walk them around the
block and clean up after them.
During down time, the dogs
nap or romp in l0-foot-square
playpens, two dogs in each.
It's hard to be sure, but the
Dalmatians' doggy digs sound
spot on.

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"Enrichment time".is I btg part of managing these bundles of energy,

--- whom
e' ' for
playtime never ends. Trainer Harris getJhe-r reward from Jada.

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