Wishbone: Death of a Working Dog

played leading roles in Hollywood. Look there's total from Kansas's most courageous Cairn terrier who's come to Tagas Dome, to the collie who seemed to save more people in the nineteen fifties than the polio vaccine did, to the Golden retriever who held court in the air Bud Movies, Dogs Don't Play Basketball was the matters, Gentlemen. A frasier team might get beat by a dog, But I'm not sure any dog has ever played a role as multifaceted as the one played by the Jack Russell terrier who starred

in the nine nineties PBS television series Wishbone. Believe me it was nothing, Okay, wish Let's have some meat? Did I hear you say meat? Love? That dog's real name was Soccer. Now as Wishbone He didn't just beg for treats. Soccer was a total action hero dog. Soccer was winning battles and getting knighted and solving mysteries closely. The clues could be anywhere. No one is above suspicion. Wishbone, it

turns out, had a rich fantasy life. In each episode, he imagined himself as a hero in a different work of classic literature. Viewers at home saw him leading a merry band of outlaws against the Sheriff of Nottingham actual of us so romancing like Shakespeare's Romeo, with loves like wings, did I or perchach these walls? And inspired by Jules Verne, digging deep, going where no dog or man had gone before, proof that we are on the right track on one

to the sudden out of the eye. For the show's target audience of six to eleven year olds, Soccer became a tween idol. I have pictures of people waiting in line two blocks long just to see this dog. What's the story, you, wish Bone? What's this your dream? Speaking today? There's a whole pack of grown ups out there who were first weaned on Mark Twain or the Legend of

Faust or the Greek epics through Wishbone. I remember, like on my tenth birthday, I think it was we were going to go mini golfing and I insisted, but we had to stay home for Wishbone first. And as a twenty five year old, a mere pup myself, I got to write for Wishbone. I've told people that writing for the show was like an assignment from an English professor on asset. So much went into this show to make it a hit, but none of it would have worked

without the top dog. I think every movie star um has eyes that tell stories, and Soccer had the most amazing dog eyes. He was a magic little creature man, he really was. He looked so good on camera. Shoudn't say this, but he wasn't the smartest dog I've ever turned. But he was so devoted. Weren't he learned it? He would walk on water for me. He just loved to be out with me working to him, it wasn't work.

From CBS Sunday Morning and I heart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment Wishbone June two one, death of a working dog. All right, So what was Wishbone about? Well, Let's have some fans who grew up with the show explain. So it was called Wishbone, and it was this little dog Jack Russell Terrier. Wishbone has a love for classic literature, and then he would like magically transport himself into stories.

Wishbone is a children's television show that aired on PBS and it is the only reason why I ever passed in English class because I did not do the reading. Okay, now my turn. The show was about a dog named Wishbone who lived in a town called Oakdale. Wishbone would get into all sorts of adventures with his owner, a boy named Joe, and the other neighbor hood kids, and those adventures would remind Wishbone of stay with me here

stories from classic literature. It could be a novel like Treasure Island, and epic poem like Homer's Odyssey in African folk tale like a Nancy the Spider. Wishbone read a lot. He didn't waste time watching TV. Just go with it, and so each episode alternated between Wishbone living his regular life in Oakdale and his fantasy life as the hero of classic literature. Twin plots thematically connected more about his

Fantasy Life later basically Wishbone. The show was all about story, but the story of the dog who played Wishbone begins with an animal trainer named Jackie Captain. Hello Jackie. Yes, it's mo oh, my good assist. In so long, it's been more than twenty five years. Jackie's been living off the grid way up in Haynes, Alaska. You know you're not easy to get a hold of. Well, that's the reason I came up here. You know, I retired UM eight years ago. It's beautiful up here, good fishing. Um

bears walked through my property. Do you think the bears know your background with animals and that they kind of respect it? Well, I've kind of told them, Look, we're on common ground here. You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. Jackie actually began her career in motion pictures working with wild animals, including bears, but she learned much of what she knows about training dogs from fame to

Hollywood trainer frank Inn. I went to work for him um and that was probably the best experience I had learning how to do dogs for motion picture. Frankie worked on Lassie, I Love Lucy. He trained Audrey Hepburn's orange tabby cat in Breakfast Ta Tiffany's. He wrangled all five hundred of the animals comprising Ellieme Lampet's cast of critters on the Beverly Hillbillies. Critters are loose things for that girl. He wouldn't do for nobody else. Here he is training

the lovable mutt who starting the Benji movies. Come on, Magic Benci, Please, come on, come on, dude, good kid, Look here a feed up state and speak. And he just was this larger than life's character, big man with a big hand of our mustache and a captain's hat. And you just couldn't forget him if you ever saw him work at dog Frank Ann helped Jackie launch her own career. She worked on the horror movie Kujoe, about

a rabid saint Bernard Cujo, What's the Matter. And she helped Ethan Hawk bond with a surly wolfhound in White Fang. I just wanted to pet him. White Fang was shot up in Haynes, Alaska. Jackie says, she you then that one day she'd retire. There. Have you got any dogs up there? I only have one dog left, which is really weird. For me, I have the Beverly Hills Chiuawa Rosa. Oh my gosh, and remember Rosa. There's nothing wrong with being different. Different is just a nice way of saying runt. Yeah,

she's twelve now, she only weighs three pounds. She's the Beverly Hills Chiwaba and she's living in Haines, Alaska, surrounded by grizzlies. How's that working out? Well, she doesn't go out much. I mean, because everything wants together, the eagles, I mean, you know, so she pretty much just stays in the cabin. Oh my god. But Jackie, I know you're retired, but this just screams out for a Beverly Hills Chiwaba sequel. I mean, escape to Alaska. I know

it does, doesn't it. I like that idea. Jackie met the dog who would one day play wishbone back in Connecticut when he was just a week old, and I said, that is the cutest probably I've ever seen. Jackie took him home that very day and named him Soccer. But because of Soccer's markings brown patches around his left eye and right ear, casting directors thought he looked too much like the Little Rascal's dog. PD. Pretty soon it seemed

clear Soccer's acting career was going nowhere. Yeah, he didn't do much at all until he did Wishbone, and he was six or seven. I think six or seven in dog years. You do the math. He was getting up there has been without ever having been my husband, and all my friends were like, really, Jaggy, why do you spend so much time training on this dog. I like this dog. He's my buddy. I don't care if he ever worked. I like this dog. And they'd all laugh at man. I'm telling you, one day, this dog is

going to get what he deserves. Auditions for the lead role in Wishbone were announced, but he was tied up on another project. I was in Montana working on River Wild, and she wasn't particularly interested. I'm tied up on a feature movie here, you know, sidebar. I loved the River Wild, an action adventure starring a buff Meryl Streep opposite an evil Kevin Bacon. Who you and the dog are expendable right now? I think I'll go whoo who the dog?

But the Wishbone team liked Soccer's look and prevailed on Jackie to bring him in for an audition and Soccer wowed them. He wasn't just charming. He pulled off all of his tricks with the cool, confidence, even cockiness of a young Claude ban Dam. He sealed the deal with a back flip, which you can see in the show's opening credits. Now, Jackie could get Soccer to do a lot, but she couldn't make him actually talk. When I first was asked to audition to be the voice of Wishbone,

I had no idea what the show was. That became the job of stand up comic and voice over actor Larry Brantley. And I've done this my whole life with animals. I watch an animal and I think I know what they're thinking. I don't know why I think that, but I'm just I'm convinced I know what's going on in that tiny little head, and and I'm pretty good at

verbalizing it. Wishbone had his voice, and so in the summer of trainer Jackie captain pactor, Bags and Soccer for the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, where Wishbone would be filmed. I know Texas in the summer. It's not pretty, but any skepticism Jackie might have felt had melted away. She was now sold on the idea of the show. You know, this could be the last thing that I do, and it seems like it's important. It's educational for children, it'll

get them to read again. And it would just hit me, It drew me, and it was like, this little dog could really bring this a love. Of course, Soccer would never go with anybody else. He'd always been with me, So you had to be there. Well, I mean he was. He was a great little dog, but he had a soft side to him. And if I wasn't there, I don't know that he would have danced the jig like he did. And in fact, he did dance jigs, and

I mean he did of every behavior. Really, there was times when we do production meetings and I think, really, folks, in my head, he doesn't have thumbs. I don't know how he's going to shoot a bow and arrow. It was like, oh, my goodness, who wrote this? Well? I was one of the people who wrote for Wishbone, and writing for this dog would end up being one of the most formative experiences of my life. Did you ever think you'd end up writing for a dog? No? I didn't, No,

I did not. That's my friend Stephanie Simpson. She was Wishbone supervising producer, story editor and head writer. However, in the early days, when I was trying to figure out how to do it, I remembered that I had always made up dialogue and sort of monologues for a cat, and so in thinking about Wishbone, I don't know, it just seemed natural. Suddenly I have to say, to write Wishbone someone's pet as having this very rich inner life

that you were not aware of. Over my career, I've been fortunate to work for a few people who put everything they humanly could into making something good, who wouldn't let up until it was as right as it could be. But Stephanie has been singular in my life. She taught me more than anyone how to tell a story. If Soccer had Jackie, I had Stephanie. Ephanie had majored in Russian literature at Yale and earned a Masters in drama at Harvard. She was perfectly trained for this bizarre task.

Of course, she couldn't do it alone, and that's when I got the call on the sand. At the time, I was in a production of South Pacific at New Jersey's Paper Mill playhouse, and we got Stephanie brought me down to Dallas to interview with Wishbone executive producer Rick Duffield, who hired me as a staff writer. I began working

with Stephanie and what felt like a storytelling boot camp. Now, as I explained earlier, each episode of the show connected a modern day storyline in the fictional town of Oakdale to a different work of classic literature. Here's Wishbone as Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliett. Who is her mother? Her mother is the lady of the house, Oh, lady of the Is she a capulet? Who is that gentleman?

His name is Romeo? Now in the contemporary plot line for that episode, one of the neighborhood kids, Samantha, falls in love with the beagle named Rosie at the local pound and wants to adopt her. But you, dad, that you have a go sa this dog, He couldn't say. Now, the contemporary world was a way to show that there were themes and ideas in these in these great books

that could be translated into a kid's life. So you could fall in love with the dog at the pound, and suddenly that could be the story of Romeo and Romeo and Juliet. Now, there wasn't going to be a suicide in the contemporary story as there is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. But there could be heartbreak. There could be a dog is adopted before you are able to adopt it. Sam, I'm sorry. I know how much you liked Rosie and so you have to deal with some

kind of loss. I'm glad she's okay. I mean, she really needed a good home for me. The exciting thing was trying to matt the thread of what I thought would capture a kid's imagination and also their hearts. What would they care the most about. And it never occurred to you that an episode should with all due respect, because I have nothing against cliffs notes, and they don't pronounced cliffs notes. And for somebody who's trouble with says,

it's a lot of says. But anyway, But because it could have been in other hands, it would have been, Okay, we're going to do the totality of this book in the half hour. No, that never Actually, I never felt pressure to do that. What I felt pressure to do was to get someone to fall in love with the idea of the book, the idea of the book, the idea of the book, not the plot, not the out of it. But because there's only so many plots in the world. Plot really, to me in a book is

not the point. The point is how the author has taken a set of events and made them mean something different than they've ever met before because of who exactly is doing them and why they're doing them. If LeVar Burton's show Reading Rainbow was teaching kids how to read, Wishbone was showing kids why great books matter, and to me it felt like the authors of these books never wrote them, so that the books themselves would be um

kind of locked away from everyday people. I mean no offense to uh literature majors, but I think it would be very disappointing for Cervantes to find out that only a small group of select students at a university we're reading don Quixote. That would be super sad for him. That's a work that's so sprawling, there are so many ideas, they so long to read it. MO and I had, you know, maybe three days. Cervantes's Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is about an idealistic man chasing the

impossible dream of becoming a night. In the Wishbone version, Joe chases a long shot of his own consecutive free throws in five minutes. That's all I need to hold the record for any kid on the sixteen. Then I'd be in the Encyclopedia of World records. Do you really think it's possible? Sure, Joe was trying to make a certain number of baskets and he was having trouble. He

would get nervous and choke. He imagined that his life would be amazing if he could just achieve this one great thing, and in the end he doesn't achieve it. You were great, but I didn't do the impossible. I'm not going down in history or anything. I'm not extraordinary. You don't have to perform impossible feats to be extraordinary. Just live your life. Life is an ongoing adventure. But it was the act of trying that matters. I've told people that writing for the show was like an assignment

from an English professor on asset. It totally was. Yes, you are so right, that's a perfect way to describe it. And what's so funny mo is looking back on it, I realized how crazy it was, but at the time when we were doing it, I didn't think it was that crazy, and it didn't seem nuts until later. To pull this nutty premise off, we had to stick to some hardened past rules. For example, yes, Wishbone talks, thanks to Larry Brantley, but human characters and wishbones life in

Oakdale don't hear him. Only the lucky viewers here what he's thinking. But when Wishbone is imagining himself as a character in a book, he's acting opposite human actors who can hear him. Mr Darcy should be a doling and escort me to the punch bow. Yes, of course, excuse us, Miss Begga the minute. Sorry. Part of what was so what was so well immediately funny was that in the

fantasy sequences that Wishbone was treated as a human. I imagine really that Wishbone was a kid, was a stand in for a kid who when they act out stories and they're the star of the movie or the comic book in their imaginations, or when they're playing it out with their friends, nobody stops and goes, well, you're a

kid doing this. You're a kid, not a king. It's funnier that the dog just takes it for granted that he's doing it and this is his imagination, and everyone will treat him in his imagination the way he would expect to be treated. People love the show so much.

It makes me so happy. And one of my goals and one of the things I think I said to you and to the whole crew and we were starting, is we have an opportunity to be the first people to introduce these stories and images into a child's imagination. And I had to tell you also, Stephanie. You know, for all these years since the project, anything I've tried to do, I end up going back to wish Phone and what I learned from you and working on that

and you know, grow well now. But Jackie, you know, talking about training wish Phone, I thought, I know, this is a weird way to put it, but it was like Stephanie trained me really because I came into it, and you know, it was I realized I didn't know what I was doing at first. And I am so grateful to you for I'm getting emotional phones so grateful. Thank you. Mo Well. I'm so grateful to hear you say that because I I was under a lot of pressure,

and it was difficult. Sometimes it's scared, right, And I don't think I don't know that you were scared. I was scared at first, and then you gave me, You gave me the courage to do it. Yeah. I think also that um for me, I loved each of these books so much. This is going to sound um corny, but for me, the joy of it, even though it was also scary. The thing that over helped me overcome any fear that I had was once I actually, no,

I'm going to get emotional. Once I actually read the book and fall in love with it, it seemed like not an easy thing, but an important thing to transmit that to someone else, to share that with somebody else, And that was what helped me overcome the fear of doing it. Was actually the sheer love of the story and the belief that other people needed to fall in love with it too. There's that proverb it's always darkest before the dawn. That's certainly my experience with writing the

darkness part. Stephanie taught me by example how important it is not to give up and how satisfying it is to come out the other side. Wish one is where I learned not to despair in creating something because it's like, oh my god, it's it's really looking dire right now, it's really looking dire. But this is the project where I learned that it's at that point that you just keep pushing through and you're going to get there. That's

where the leap will happen. I still remember how I felt finishing the first episode I wrote for Wishbone, based on H. G. Wells is the time Machine system destination in case of emergency, keep your hands at arms inside

the vehicle. And I remember finishing and I stayed up all night on New Year's Eve nineteen four and it was my best New Year's Eve ever finishing that script, and it kind of locking into place quite literally at dawn on New Year's Day, and that felt so and so I like my New Year's Eves to be promising and not frivolous to the epic creation moments of creations. I love it. I also think it's so fitting that you were running the time machine as the year turned over.

That is kind of perfect. How will you remember Soccer? I will always remember Soccer as the dog who made what I imagined in my head even better then I had imagined it, I really will. I thought, how will this ever actually happened? How will we ever actually do this? And then once I saw Soccer on screen, I felt this relief that this was going to work and it was going to be even better than I thought it

could be. And that's how I will remember Soccer. I am be grateful to Soccer always for that would be grateful to him. I am grateful to him and his beautiful brown eyes. Wishbone wasn't just the best red dog on TV. He was also the best dressed. I mean this dog was a total clothes horse. Just his hats alone. There was the top hat for when he played Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the adorable straw hat he wore as Tom Sawyer, the bi Coocke. That's the name of

that cute little had he sported his robin hood. Wishbone super fans like Claire Connolly vividly recall his costumes. There was an episode where it was the Tempest and he was aerial and had this sort of like flowy costume that was really cute that I liked a lot. Trust me, you'll want to look up Wishbones Tempest to wardrobe. We're

talking Liberaci level over the top costume designers. Stephen chowed Edge and his team dressed an entire cast in a different period specific wardrobe each episode, head to toe or head to tail in the case of our star choot Edge talked to Entertainment tonight in the challenge is sizing down human clothes and making them actually fit a dog. Dogs have a different anatomy than than humans, as is obvious and U of course too. We have to we have to make things that he will wear well. For Ivanhoe,

he was wearing chain mail. Dogs don't wear chain mail ordinarily. Well, they don't wear pants either. That's Soccer's trainer, Jackie Captain again. Mark Twain remembered he had pants and we'd all laugh. You know, I'd never had him back flip with pants. Yeah, he kind of looked at me like, really, yeah, you can do it. It's okay. Um. So that took a few days for him to get used to the pants. Of course, it wasn't just that backflip you saw on the opening credits. Soccer had to learn all sorts of

new tricks and performed them in costume. Jackie trained him to belly crawl through the fog of war. In the Red Badge of Courage episode, she trained him to pull the lever on the time machine. I think when we went there, we had like fifteen behaviors, different tricks, and by the time we finished Wishbone, he had like forty tricks. I was like, how many tricks can one little dog store in his little break? But he was so devoted. Weren't he learned it? He would walk on water for me. Well,

you say he'd walk on water for you. But to be fair, he didn't really like water, did he. No, he didn't. Okay, it's a I don't like the water. Most of the water work, including an epic scene from the Odyssey episode, was handled by a stunt dog named Phoebe Daily. Yes, there were other dogs. Phoebe was amazing and Phoebe was fearless righton Linda Hamilton. Phoebe could leap off of things, she could swim, lap, she I think sat on a horse. At one point. There was another

stunt double. And I say this affectionately, but this dog had a face for radio. I mean this was a dog that I remember looking a little to me Durante like, is that a fair way of characterizing Slugger or am I being unfair? Oh Slugger, he was so cute. He's such a sweet dog. I forgot about Slugger. Sorry Slugger, but rest assured. Soccer wasn't almost every scene. But what's interesting about the other dogs is that none of them were close up dogs. It was still Soccer who was

the the star. The wishbones, those marking, those eyes, and one other thing I can say about Soccer's acting was his ability to look focused. Soccers look at the other actor appeared as if he really was taking in what they were saying. I remember on set after the director called action, often the only other voice you'd hear was Jackie's speaking directly to her dog. When I was just working him on the set, my voice would be just kind of normal. I rehearse him to something god mark,

stay good um. But then when we were done and he did exactly what I wanted, I wanted him to know that that was correct, and I'd go good for you good, and you could see that he'd be like, yes, I did um, and that means a lot to them. Or when we were doing backflip, that's a really hard behavior and I'd always go Ready, Ready, and that kind of geared him up to what we were doing. Ready Flip. The show debuted on October nine and soon developed a

with all due respect to ko Joe rapid following. As you know, Wishbone is the star of the mega popular, award winning children's show on PBS Design to introduce kids to literature. I gave you once again the Wishbone super fans. What more could you ask for? It's the perfect kids show. You got a cute dog, you got education. I remember my first exposure to like William Shakespeare was from this freaking dog. We were just very wish one obsessed in

my house growing up outside Albany, New York. Aaron McDonough was a loyal viewer. I remember going to the library with my mom and being his big stack of books and Faust was in there, which was one of my favorite episodes. And you know that one he sells his soul to the devil for a woman in the librarian looked me like dead in the faces. This is not appropriate for children. You cannot take up this book, and I was like it was on Wishbone. Wishbone won several

Daytime Emmys, including for those dazzling costumes. The show also won a Peabody Award for Broadcast Storytelling Excellence. Wishbone, presented here by Dan Rather, a diminutive canine with a taste for classic literature. Here is the star of this next magative series. Soccer was now a bona fide star. Oh yeah, you couldn't take him anywhere. You couldn't take him to a public park. No way, I'd be traveling to an airport.

I mean I had to cover his crate up with a towel so people didn't see his face because we wouldn't go through the airport. You're kidding. And I have pictures of people waiting in line two blocks long just to see this dog. Gee. I mean, it was just incredible. I'm just to see him. Larry Brantley, the voice of Wishbone, remembers one incident at the height of soccer celebrity. During a promotional trip to d C. Soccer stayed in one night while Larry and the other humans went out for dinner.

When they came back, they found their hotels sweep in disarray. He trashed it. He went after the comforter on the bed, tore that both the pillow cases and pillows gone. He crawled under the bed. You know that black matting that holds the box bringing all that's out just cluttered around the room like confetti. She was so upset, and I'm like, Jackie, this was his rock star moment. So what happened after

Wishbone ended? What did? What did Soccer do? He just ran the ranch and hung out with me, and you know, I just really felt like he gave me his heart. And I also didn't want him on film because he was so recognizable as Wishbone and everybody's going to see him and go, that's Wishbone. What's he doing that for? And I think he really deserved his time to retire because he did his job. He never let me down, he never quit me. Um, And to me, that's the ultimate.

Soccer died on June two thousand one. He was thirteen. I don't think you ever get used to it. I've had dogs my whole life, and you never get used to losing one of them. Um. People think, oh, she has a lot of dogs, that it's not hard for her. No, it's really hard. Um. I missed him a lot. I still missed him. What kind of a reaction did his death. Get I didn't really um tell anybody for a year or so. Um, I just you know, it's such a personal thing. He was a public dog on video, he

was still my private dog. He was my dog, and that's between me and him, and I didn't want people to see them when he got really old and he couldn't hardly see. You know, everybody's going to get old. I wanted him to have dignity because he was such a pretty outgoing, happy, go lucky kind of guy. Yeah, I was sorry to see him go. Well. I apologize for being so hard to get a hold of it. You know, when you retire, you become very irresponsible. Good

for you. When I think of Soccer now, I think of the former kids who still get excited when I tell them I wrote for the show. I think of the blazing heat of the Texas summer when we shot outside, and how jealous I was that Soccer had an air conditioned to he could rest in, which Ween takes. I kind of wanted to crawl in there with him. I think of how fortunate I was that my very first job in television was on a show where so much love went into the final product. And I think of

Soccer's gorgeous face. Those eyes really did tell stories. Damn he really was a good looking dog. It's this really cute show that I feel like too few people know about. At this point. The reason I have all these books isn't my fault. It's this guy's fault. Why the books? What happened? What's the story wish Bone? When it comes up that one of your adult friends also watched wish Bone? Like, that's a conversation that can last another hour, you know,

I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts and suck out Mobituaries. Great Lives Worth Reliving The New York Times best selling book now available in paperback and audio book. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This

episode of Mobituaries was produced by Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilco, Martinez Cacceto, and me Morocca. He was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is Neon hom Media. Our archival producer at CBS is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio Special thanks to Gideon Evans,

Kate mccauliffe, and Alberto Ravina. Our senior producer is the Irrepressible Aaron Shrank. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and as always on dying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John Carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries