Tonight: The Story of Lassie and Lassie Unleashed, both broadcast in 1994 for the 40th anniversary of the series.

June Lockhart always has great fun telling a story about one episode called "The Big Cat." Quick synopsis: the family has gone ahead to help set up at the Grange supper. Ruth follows with the ribs she's cooked. Car gets flat tire; when she gets spare out of trunk it rolls away. Cut to earlier scene: ranger arrives at Martin house, tells Ruth he has planted traps to get a cougar attacking farm animals. He gives her a C-clamp to release the traps should any of their farm animals get caught in it. It falls to the floor, Lassie picks it up. Ruth puts it on the counter.

Back to story: You guessed it, Ruth is caught in one of the cougar traps. Back at the house, Lassie senses something is wrong, jumps out window (the Martins spent a fortune getting replacement panes of glass), finds Ruth. On the chance Lassie will get it, Ruth tells her to "get the C-clamp on the counter." Lassie runs off, comes back with the cheese slicer. "C-clamp," Ruth repeats. "You picked it up. On the counter."

This time Lassie gets back with the C-clamp, Ruth frees herself, and just in the nick of time since the cougar attacks her. Smart lady, knowing there was possible danger, she toted a shotgun with her. She keeps the animal from hurting Lassie or herself.

Anyway, Ms. Lockhart always goes on about the absurdity of telling Lassie to get the C-clamp. I haven't figured out what is so absurd about it. First, smart dogs understand many words. I am constantly astonished at Willow's vocabulary. I'm sure this dog understands at least 30 words. If we wanted to teach her "counter," we could. Charles Schultz of "Peanuts" fame owned a beagle named Sparky who was the inspiration for Snoopy. He says you could tell Sparky to "go down in the cellar and get a potato," and the dog knew both cellar and potato and could do it. So all Lassie had to do was get something on the counter. After all, she mistakenly fetches the cheese slicer first.

Secondly, there is an exercise in obedience classes where a dog has to fetch one dumbbell out of six that has been recently touched by his handler. It is a standard exercise which is passed by hundreds of dogs out for their U.D. (Utility Dog) degree every year (they also have to distinguish between a plastic, wooden, and metal dumbbell on command and bring the correct one back). So if Lassie knows what "counter" is, it is probably pretty simple for her to reach up on the counter to find some object that was recently handled. She may not recognize it as a C-clamp, but she knows Ruth handled it earlier from the scent. So there's nothing really "absurd" about it at all.

(On the other hand, I agree with June Lockhart about the episode about the new refrigerator. That was just silly.)

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:25:00 PM

Comments:

I'll come clean here--I was more of a Tommy Rettig-Jan Clayton-George Cleveland Jeff's Collie fanatic, partly because I loathed that kid that played Timmy, Jon Provost. (I kept rooting for an episode in which he would venture out into the woods, only to be eaten by Gentle Ben--and if luck were on my side, Jay North of Dennis the Menace would be tagging along with him.) To this day, I've been searching for a film--any film--that features Cleveland and he's not playing an old man.

One of the funniest things my mother ever said was when we were watching some program that featured June Lockhart as a bedridden alcoholic: "Look! There's Lassie's mom, boozing it up!" (I guess you had to be there at the time.)

# posted by  Ivan G Shreve Jr : 10:09:00 AM

 

Your mother must have loved it when Barbara Billingsly turned up speaking jive. :-)

I really don't like the early Timmy episodes either; he was just too cute. It got better when they got to sixth season and he could have some adventures as in "Star Reporter." And let's not talk about Boomer as a Porky clone... The Jeff episodes are very much "tougher" than the Timmy ones...but then Robert Maxwell thought of Lassie as a family show; I think Jack Wrather saw it as a kids' show. (Think of the difference between Maxwell's Superman episodes and Whit Ellsworth's!!!)

# posted by  Linda : 1:52:00 PM

 

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