Episode Four is titled “Top Dog Model” where the dogs get to work with a fashion photographer …. and we’re treated right off the bat to the drama of raging jealousy (lunacy?) from Brandy (who kind of looks like Tanya Harding to me) over Travis flirting with Laura. I mean come on! It was ridiculously juvenile and almost looked to the point of being staged by the producers to get things a little steamy.
One other thing to point out before we get into the canine adventures, is that the audio overdubbing of the commentary and narration from the host Jarrod Miller. He is a well versed television talent with a background in zoology, but it’s apparent that he doesn’t do well in the live events so the producers correct the mistakes in post production. Unfortunately the don’t do a very good job of it and the sound compression differences are certainly obvious.
The challenge for the week is to work with a professional photographer to portray a random word chosen in a blind draw. With choices ranging from “Regal” to “Stubborn” to “Curious” … the best match of dog to word is Tillman the bulldog getting to display the word “Lazy”! In fact, JD yells out “We have a winner!”
No doubt that Tillman is a great contributor to the humor of this show with his looks and actions, in fact Bill says at one point when hearing of Tillman’s exploits, “we need to start a cartoon about that dog!”
Teresa and Leroy get an unfairly difficult word to portray with “Angry”. For a naturally happy Border Collie it’s a real stretch to invoke anger during the photoshoot, and in my opinion this wasn’t a fair choice since none of the other words required antagonizing the dogs. She got called out by the judges for using “snarl bands” as inhumane. Laura claims they are used on movie sets all the time and I would be interested in finding out if that is true .. the judges certainly would be aware of that.
During the shoot and many previous challenges, it is very apparent that JD and Galaxy, a mixed Border Collie / English Pointer are amazing together in in terms of command and control. Their experience tourin
g as a stunt dog team have provided ample opportunity for JD to ensure in depth training. It’s impressive to see the communication. As the Best in Show for this episode with a picture of Galaxy being “sneeky” they get the exciting news that they will be featured on an upcoming issue of Dog Fancy magazine as Judge Allan Reznik is the Editor-At-Large.
Beth Joy and Bella Starlet are annoying and will not last for many weeks longer (one factor with the way this game goes, this is not a cumulative series of competitions, and since the photoshoot was more in their wheel house they had no trouble staying on until next week) .. had the word “mischievous” which they pulled off easily. However, I have heard the word mispronounced so many times I am writing it here. The pronunciation is mis-chuh-vuh
s. It is not mis-chee-vee-us …
Ron & Tillman , Brandy & Beacon, Theresa & Leroy are sentenced to the bottom three in the Best in Show Arena, and in a big shocker at the end Ron and Tillman gone from the Canine Academy! Too bad because there goes a big bunch of the humor in the show.
As Ron was saying at the end of the show, “Tillman puts smiles on people’s faces”. And sums it up perfenctly with “the house is going to miss Tillman”.
Agreed.
