Angus in "Puppy".

This is Angus, brilliant dog who at the grand old age of 12 months did his first (and my first solo) film job.

His second film was "Puppy" an arthouse production filmed in Flemington and Healesville.

The above pic is him in 'makeup' after his 'death' scene.

There were lots of running scenes, through buildings, jumping up at elevators, running up stairs, bolting across distances and through horses tethered.

Angus was the kind of boy who just listened , thought about it then gave you even more than you had asked of him. Quite a serious staffy and not prone to silly, loving and kind.

He had a mate called Took, a magpie, but that is another story.

Back to 'Puppy'...we had an Irish writer/director and bugger all budget so everybody mucked in and got the job done. Angus shared his fame with two rotties who were the 'Guard dogs' at the healesville location. Angus had been 'killed off' by then.

His death scene was shot in the front seat of a car, storyline being that the owner had just accidently run over him. He was laid out on the seat, head hanging down and quantities of fake blood running from him. All quiet on set....head down, head down, shhhh, sleep.....breathing slows, body relaxes, eyes are closed.....then "ACTION!!!"

Dog leaps up..."WHAT????" " WHERE???"

I look across at a confused and quite pissed off director (time is money) and have to explain that every other take we have done ACTION means run like stink. Ohhhh...ok then.

We reset and the humans just got a nod and a hand signal, all good.

Job finished for the night, lets go home mate.