Movie Star Pets

What happens when a Great Dane puppy is nursed by a Dachshund together with three of its own offspring? Well, it grows up thinking that it is just a Dachshund, only a lot bigger. And the other Dachshunds think that it is one big, ugly Dachshund.
That’s exactly what happens in the movie The Ugly Dachshund. The Great Dane grows up without realizing that it belongs to a different breed. Until its owner takes it along to participate in a dog contest. As a Great Dane.

The Ugly Dachshund started as a novel written by Gladys Browyn Stern in 1938.Then in 1966, Walt Disney Productions turned it into a feature film. The screenplay was done by Albert Aley. Norman Tokar directed. Dean Jones stars as Mark Garrison, an artist. Suzanne Pleshette plays his wife, Fran. Charles Ruggles is the kindly, old veterinarian, Dr. J.L. Pruiit. Kelly Thordsen took the role of Officer Carmody, later promoted to sergeant. The movie revolves around Danke, a Dachshund bitch, and her three lovely puppies, Chloe, Wilhelmina and Heidi. They run around, jump over and slide through under their nursing mate, Brutus, a somewhat overgrown Dachshund.

Brutus is actually a Great Dane. Dr. Pruiit, who delivered Danke’s puppies, also had a Great Dane bitch that had just given birth to a number of Great Dane puppies. More than it had milk for. One too many, to be exact. So Danke ends up being the wet nurse to a Great Dane. And Dave becomes the owner of an overgrown Dachshund. Brutus, growing up with the Dachshunds, thinks that it is a Dachshund. And the Dachshunds thinks that, although it was overgrown, it was not too over-bright.

In the movie The Ugly Dachshund, time and again, the Dachshund makes a mess, then runs off in the nick of time, leaving Brutus to take the blame. Since it is Dave’s dog, he gets the short end of the stick from his wife, too. Fran, the little woman, probably took a crash course from her mother before she married Dave. A crash course in something like ‘How to be happily married by keeping your husband on a short leash’. She seems to have learned well, too. Like the time when Dave gets so exasperated by her nagging that he shouts at her to ‘Shut up!’. She responds by telling him, in no uncertain terms, that, ‘If you ever say that to me again, I will never speak to you forever.’ She sounds exactly like the little girl who, on being told by her older brothers that they did not want to take her along to the park, retorted, ‘If you won’t take me along, I refuse to follow you there’.

Perfectly logical repartee. For the female of the species, that is. Just as it is perfectly logical to Fran that, since Danke is a champion Dachshund, therefore Chloe, Danke’s puppy, is destined to be a champion, too. Somehow her line of reasoning is not quite in line with Dave’s way of thinking. When Fran enters Chloe for the dog show, fully expecting to win the coveted blue ribbon, Dave is there, too, as a participant. With Brutus.

Can a Great Dane that thinks it is a Dachshund and behaves like one compete with the other Great Danes that walk tall and proud like any self-respecting Great Dane would? The secret is in the most illuminating piece of wisdom that Dave told Fran, ‘Females make a lot of difference’.

Watch the The Ugly Dachshund DVD to find out what exactly he meant. Watch it with the man or woman in your life, as the case might be. Dachshunds and Great Danes, optional.

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