Canine craze

>> Glen Salzman launches Dogs With Jobs

by MATTHEW HAYS

Seasoned Montreal producer Glen Salzman said he was surprised at the response he and writer Merrily Weissbord got when they pitched their idea for a TV series. The pitch was for 13 episodes titled Dogs With Jobs: Working Dogs Around the World and the setting was the high-profile Banff Television Festival.

The Banff pitch session allows filmmakers to trial-run their pitches in front of a group of professionals, who can then give the filmmakers tips on how to improve their selling points. But before Salzman and Weissbord knew it, network execs were making actual bids on the show during their mock pitch session.

"There's something about dogs that everyone seems intrigued by," says Salzman, who reports that within months of Weissbord approaching him with the idea for the series, they had financial backing. "Plus, a lot of network people have dogs. None of them seemed to be reading the proposal when we showed it to them--they were all looking at the pictures."

CBC landed the series, which is slated to air in September of '99. Salzman, whose Cineflix Productions is behind the show, is hoping to further the 13 episodes with new seasons, making it a potential challenge to The Littlest Hobo's claim to being the longest-running Canadian series about pups.

After all, Salzman points out, the possibilities for Dogs With Jobs are endless. Just look at a few of the premiere season's opening acts: profiles of a dog who can sniff out melanoma on human skin, thus helping doctors to detect the severe skin cancer early; dogs who act as early-warning system companions for epileptics (these dogs can sense when their master is about to have a seizure); arson-detector dogs who sniff out the ruins of fires to decipher if the blaze was deliberately set; rescue dogs who are dropped from helicopters to retrieve people in bodies of water; and even a Swedish landmine-detecting dog.

Weissbord's inspiration came from her veterinarian daughter Kim, who suggested that virtually everyone would take interest in a show about man's best friends. "For whatever reason," says Salzman, "people find tales about dogs heartening and uplifting."