Bob Weatherwax was a dog trainer who, like his father, earned acclaim breeding and training the collies that portrayed Lassie.
- Died: August 15, 2024 (Who else died on August 15?)
- Details of death: Died in Scranton, Pennsylvania of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at the age of 83.
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Bob Weatherwax’s legacy
Weatherwax was just a toddler when the first Lassie movie, “Lassie Come Home,” debuted in 1943. His father, Rudd Weatherwax, was the trainer who turned his collie – a male dog named Pal – into the canine screen star known by the world as Lassie. A string of male Lassies followed, bred by the Weatherwax family to have the distinctive look of the original Lassie and trained to act alongside their human co-stars. While the elder Weatherwax worked with one of Hollywood’s greatest dog stars, his son apprenticed alongside him. And when Rudd died in 1985, Bob took over the family business.
Though the original series of movies and the hit TV series “Lassie,” were long done by the mid-‘80s, Weatherwax helped drive a Lassie revival. Lassie returned to TV in 1989 for the series “The New Lassie,” and the 1994 movie “Lassie” was a family-friendly hit. Weatherwax worked with such dogs as Howard, a direct descendent of the original Pal, to bring Lassie’s adventures to a new generation. A few years after “The New Lassie” was cancelled, Howard returned to TV in the Canadian “Lassie” series.
Lassie wasn’t the only dog trained by Weatherwax. He also trained Tiger, the dog that played Doc Brown’s dog, Einstein, in “Back to the Future.” His other training credits include “The Thing” and the 1993 movie “Dennis the Menace.” Weatherwax was a cousin to Ken Weatherwax (1955–2014), who played Pugsley on TV’s “The Addam’s Family.”
Notable quote
“Due to my father’s genius, we transformed the training of dogs from simple props on a movie set into actors who seemed to behave with human-like emotions.” — from an autobiographical essay written for Weatherwax’s IMDB profile
Tributes to Bob Weatherwax
Full obituary: The New York Times
