Heidi Misses Her First Casting Call

I practically had my foot out the door on Tuesday morning, on my way to a long-scheduled medical appointment, when I saw the little red light on my cell phone go on, indicating a text message.  I was surprised – I don’t usually get text messages because I don’t send text messages, figuring e-mail will do the job and will not result in any baffling additional phone charges.

(A quick aside, since we’re talking communications technology:  In light of Jimmy Kimmel’s declaration of this past Thursday as National Unfriend Day -- inspired because too many of us collect Facebook “friends” we don’t even know -- I confess I once carelessly friended someone recommended via my list of associations, only to find out in an e-mail from his family that my new friend was dead. I was sincerely thanked for wanting to stay connected to the posthumous Facebook page the family was maintaining in his honor.  Yikes! I friended a dead guy.  Luckily, the family removed the page before I risked being struck down by lightning for unfriending the dead.  Question for Twilight fans: is it possible to unfriend the undead, or do they just keep on posting embarrassing personal details for all eternity?).

But I digress. This text message was not from the afterworld, or even for me -- it was for the dog.  Urgent. “Need dog model for photo shoot today, is Heidi available at 12:30-1:30? Unfortunately no pay for the talent but you get to meet Julie Grady of General Hospital.”

Wow, was this Heidi’s first casting call? She’s done some work as an actor, but only because I begged for it in the name of journalism. There was no I.D. on the text message. I hoped that the offer had come in because of my for producers of TV crime procedurals to cast Heidi in a K-9 role.   And I couldn’t believe that this dumb medical thing was going to blow Heidi’s chance to break into the business on her own.

I texted back – guess what, it’s really easy -- to find out where the photo shoot would occur. Could I manage to race from my appointment to the set in time?  It wasn’t until I got a return text with the El Segundo location that I realized that the message was from our friend, animal photographer Andy Sheng of Otis & Lucy Photography, the man responsible for my Patch photo with Heidi and, yes, my Facebook page photo, too.

Even though the offer wasn’t quite out of the blue, we would have been there in a shot had the timing worked out.  Since it didn’t, I thought it best not to tell Heidi of the call -- actors are so emotional. Later, I phoned Andy to find out some details about the project and why he’d thought Heidi would be good casting.

The shoot was for a new eco-friendly pet bed company called Better Buddies, started by actress Julie Berman Grady, a General Hospital regular, her husband Michael Grady and business partner William Busch.   Ten percent of the profits from each bed sold goes to Best Friends Animal Society’s Guardian Angels Program for homeless animals.  With very short deadline, the project had to be completed by the 15^th, so Andy was rounding up pets for last-minute duty.  Andy’s own dog, Louie the Labrador, perhaps the most photographed dog in Los Angeles, was also part of the project.

The cast included three cats, two Maltepoos, a Rottweiler, a Boston terrier, a Lhasa Apso named Meg Ryan and several others. Jake the Boston terrier, I’m told, is obsessed with tennis balls, so provided some great action shots and outtakes behind the scenes.  “We filled one of the beds with tennis balls, and he would dive right into the tennis balls,” Andy says. “The shots are not appropriate for the ads, but we may be able to share them with Facebook fans.”

Andy thought of Heidi because of her size, personality and color. “Because the shoot was kind of small dog-heavy in terms of cast, I wanted one more large dog,” he says.  “I know Heidi can pose, and she’s got her bag of tricks she can use, and I know she can act.  We had Louie the yellow Lab, and the Rottweiler – I basically wanted another color in there.  It was an aesthetic thing. She’d look great on some of the beds.”

Argh, the perfect gig.  Beds—Heidi is very good at sleeping, she practices all the time. She also adores balls of all sorts. But this time around, she’ll just have to wait to see Jake and his tennis balls on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Heidi will probably have a chance to visit Sheng’s El Segundo studio soon for this year’s Christmas party, tentatively scheduled for Dec. 17 (your dog can stay posted by visiting the website).  Not on the website are Otis & Lucy’s holiday special offers: Schedule a photo shoot for your pet before Dec. 10 and you will receive 25 free holiday cards and a 2012 calendar featuring photos of your pet.

The reason special-offer details haven’t made it to the website this year: Andy has been very busy working for Rhythm & Hues Studios on special effects for the new movie Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Chip-Wrecked.  In the movie, the chipmunks are marooned on remote volcanic island.  Andy found creating the volcano especially challenging.  “I will not give away the story line,” he says. “You’ll have to go to the movie to see if Andy successfully blew up the chipmunks.”