by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Pete White

Age: 43

Occupation: Animal wrangler/coordinator

Salary: $650 a day

Bio: This South Shore dynamo has been an animal wrangler since 1978, supplying horses and other creatures to do nifty tricks for the film and television industries. A former pro rodeo cowboy, these days he works primarily as an animal coordinator for films, supervising other wranglers and setting up stunts, shots etc. Having suffered from meningitis as a child, Pete says “It was horses that got me back, almost to normal. But I’m still dyslexic—big time!”

Does he think most animals enjoy their Hollywood servitude? “It all depends on the trainer, and there are good and bad trainers. There are a lot of wannabes trying to do this, but if I were Minister of Agriculture, I sure wouldn’t issue permits to most of them.”

Why he isn’t so sure about “wannabe” wranglers: “Because you get these guys, who maybe have a tiger or something—and they think they know tigers—but they don’t know the film industry very well. And these guys are prepared to do anything so the producers will be happy and call them again. So they end up putting enormous pressure on their tiger, putting him in conditions that he’s never been in and where they don’t really know how he is going to react. And when this sort of thing happens, you can’t be sure that somebody isn’t going to get killed.”

Something that he has done: Written the union regulations with respect to animal welfare on local movie sets.

When he was asked to write these rules: A couple of years ago, after somebody was killed by an animal on a film shoot. “The SPCA is good about these things, but they have limited resources to be there on every film shoot—although if somebody makes a complaint they will show up. But you have to be very moral about your work, because, really, anything goes. But people are gradually becoming more educated.”

Has anybody ever approached him about using one of his horses in an X-rated film? Not yet.

Is it easier to train an animal to do unnatural acts by starving it or by beating it repeatedly? “Well, you never beat it, but the hunger drive works well with some animals, particularly big cats.”

How many commands a smart dog can learn to obey: About 750.

A quick-witted horse like Mr. Ed: About 1,400 commands. “Horses learn pretty easy.”

Worst part of the job: Dealing with “the power trips that so many people in this business seem to be on.”

Musical preferences: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bach, “not the guy from Skid Row.”

Television preferences: TLC, Canal D. “I look for documentaries mostly.”

Literary preferences: Historical and science/biology texts. “Just so long as it has to do with horses. I can tell you what the horses were like in pretty well any historical period.”

Childhood ambition: To become a cowboy.

Words of wisdom: “As long as they’ll have money, we’ll have patience.” :

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