Farewell Uggie, you were the wooftastic king of the doggie A-list: JAN MOIR salutes the Oscar winning mutt after he was put down aged 13

By Jan Moir for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:16 EST, 12 August 2015 | Updated: 21:41 EST, 12 August 2015

Fetch! Uggie, pictured clasping a toy Oscar statuette between his teeth, has been put down aged 13

Fetch! Uggie, pictured clasping a toy Oscar statuette between his teeth, has been put down aged 13

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Although you won’t have to prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

For Uggie the wonder dog has died. The four-legged Hollywood star was put down on Friday after suffering from a prostate tumour.

He was 13 years old and had spent a wooftastic decade in showbusiness, appearing in both films and television dramas. If every dog has its day, then his greatest came in 2011 when he starred in the Oscar-winning film The Artist, in which he played ‘The Dog’.

Uggie’s owner and trainer Omar Von Muller confirmed the death on his Facebook page and posted that ‘our beloved boy has passed away’.

Ohhh, sniffle. I felt a pang of real sadness at the news. Not just because I adored Uggie and once had lunch with him in a restaurant in London.

There, sitting nattily by a red banquette, he scoffed gingered tuna from a silver bowl and lapped down chilled mineral water with nicer table manners than a lot of Hollywood starlets. No, it was more that he was the original bad dog gone good, a messed-up pooch who pawed his way up from the gutter to hit the big time.

Uggie was two years old when he was rescued from a Los Angeles dog pound by Mr Von Muller, abandoned after two families had rejected him because he was ‘too hyper’. However, the California-based animal trainer saw a spark of star quality in the broken-coat, long legged Jack Russell terrier, and a Hollywood partnership was born.

Why him? Like all the most successful canine stars, Uggie had a very expressive face. He was also calm, smart, unafraid and good at taking orders. Crucially, he would also do almost anything for a sausage.

He went on to have many trot-on parts in various television shows and adverts but his breakthrough role came as Queenie in the 2011 film Water for Elephants, alongside Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson.

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His last job was in the film Holiday Road Trip in 2013, where he played a dog called Scoots who stole a bunch of keys to help some good guys escape from jail.

Along the way, Uggie had his own fan club, won the Palm Dog award for best canine actor at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and had his biography published.

Meaty role: The Hollywood star pictured with actress Berenice Bejo in The Artist, one of his seminal films

Meaty role: The Hollywood star pictured with actress Berenice Bejo in The Artist, one of his seminal films

Uggie was calm, smart, unafraid and good at taking orders
He is pictured at the screening of The Artist

Uggie (pictured left in December 2012 at his book launch and right at the screening of The Artist) was calm, smart, unafraid and good at taking orders

He was also the first dog to leave his paw prints on the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, an honour denied even to Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and Eddie from Frasier. Not to mention those recent p-upstarts such as Pudsey and Matisse from Britain’s Got Talent. All of them should just sit down now! in memory of Uggie, the king of the canine A-list. Of course, Uggie is best known for his role in The Artist, for which he was paid a career high of £23,000.

Beloved Uggie, pictured at the Golden Globes in 2012

Beloved Uggie, pictured at the Golden Globes in 2012

The acclaimed silent film gave the terrier the opportunity to show off his impressive acting range, which included playing dead, looking quizzical, kissing girls, walking on his hind legs and – best of all – covering his eyes with his paws in dismay.

Once the film was released, Uggie became a big star – although it was to Mr Von Muller’s great regret that success came so late. For in doggy years, Uggie was already an old man. On the Artist set, a younger dog called Dash had to do most of the fast running scenes – and Uggie had to have a little bit of help from the make-up department to hide his grey hairs during close-ups.

However, the fact that he had beaten a vanload of younger pups to clinch the role must have given him a quiet sense of triumph – a feeling that Dame Helen Mirren is perhaps not unfamiliar with.

By the time we met, Uggie was supposed to have retired, but demand kept him busy on both sides of the Atlantic. On that day, he was fresh from an appearance on the Graham Norton Show, where he had taken a one-legged ride on a skateboard and developed a passion for Marks & Spencer cocktail sausages supplied by the host.

Offstage he preferred chasing a ball to chasing a stick, and an occasional snack of dried liver, but what he liked doing more than anything else was snoozing. He had already developed shaking syndrome, which his breed are prone to when they get older, and his cat-chasing, spotlight-staking days were coming to a close.

Still, it was lovely to meet him, even if he did have sausage breath and a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of the restaurant.

 

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