There was never a more cherished pet than Hotspur. Hotspur (full name Hotspur Plantagenet) was my first dog as an adult. A perky, independent, 12 lb. Yorkshire Terrier. Too big for a Yorkie and he didn't have any of the proper points. But what a spirit. He was feisty, but not high-strung...in fact, somewhat mellow. I got Hotspur from a litter when my brother and sister-in-law bred their Yorkie. It was 1976. I was living in Dallas, Texas, acting. Three weeks after I had him, we were travelling to Columbus where I was touring in The Silver Whistle with Don DeFore and Larry Drake (before his two emmys). It was the blizzard of '76. And to see Hotspur leaping through snow and emerging from it with snow puff balls on his legs looking like a poodle was quite a sight. He became the consummate show biz dog.
Hotspur always travelled with me when I toured. In dinner theatres, you often have apartments in the theatre. In many places, Spur was so loved he had the run of the place...If the Health Departments only knew that he could wander in some kitchens and have the chef feeding him, they'd be aghast. After the show, I'd walk him outside the theatre and he greet the departing audience.
He was a great traveller, always curling up along side my side in the Old Buick Skylark with his head on my thigh, snoozing complacently as we shot down long stretches of barren Texas highway. Saving his pit-stops for gas station breaks. His body clock adjusted perfectly to mine. He slept for as long as I did, had an exceptional bladder, and was perfectly trained. Rarely any accidents.
Spur had girlfriends and pals all over the country...Rosie, Nouveau Riche (Rickey), Cherie, Sammy, I Am (Yammer), Cointreau...Many were fellow actors' dogs. When I toured with Martha Raye, Martha always wanted the actors to come to her place after the show. She insisted I always collect Hotspur first because she adored him and he played with her yorkie, Conky, and poodle, Dickens, while we all watched old movies or played Password (Maggie always called me the intellectual because when we were partnered, I was always giving her word clues she didn't know the meaning of). Bob Denver also loved him, "Great dog, dumb name," he would say. He was wrong. He was a great dog and it was a perfect name. The owner of the dinner theatre in Odessa, Texas, loved Spur so much that during rehearsal week when I was in an hotel that didn't take pets before our cast moved into the theatre, she and her husband would baby-sit the dog at her house. Her hubby was reluctant to turn Spur back over to me, he enjoyed his morning walks with him so much.
There were only two times we were really apart. I could not have him when I first came out here in the Raye show and played San Clemente, so the parents took him for six weeks where he visited and played with his sister, Bitsy. When the show moved up to Anaheim, Spur took his first airplane ride in freight out to LAX to stay with me. He became a seasoned air traveller as well, taking what could have been a stressful trip with his usual aplomb.
When I was in London for three months shooting my first movies, Hotspur, of course, couldn't go, so went back to the grandfolks and his sis.
The rest of the time we were inseperable. When the lovely wife,Julieanne, and I got together in the mid-eightes (reunited after a college romance years before), she admitted she was at first a little jealous of Spur. But that quickly changed when he became her cuddle bunny....usually nestled between us on the couch or in the bed (he slept in the bed from the beginning), and would actually get protective of her and growl at me on occasion if I tried to disturb his cushy position in her arms.
Julieanne was the one who first got him a Schnauzer cut which, while dispensing with his flowing (usually tangled) mane and top knot, was a lot cooler and more comfortable for him and somehow made him look like the butch little guy he was. He also had an array of t-shirts that he wore in colder weather that sort of gave him that look like Spike the tough bull-dog in the Looney Tunes.
He was incorrigible beggar incorrigibly indulged by his old man...ate popcorn, pizza, little chocolate donuts, and a trip to the Astro Burger always meant a hot dog for Spur.
He was gregarious and loved company...human or animal. Uncle Larry Drake was the first one to dubbed him, "You sweet little shit-brained woogie". Somehow woogie stuck and all our dogs since, despite their names, have become a species known as "the woogs".
In August of '92, Hotspur was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and given three to six months to live. Barraged with a daily regimen of pills and medicines, special diets, and lots of attention and care, Spur blithely ignored the doctors' dire predictions, valiantly hanging around for another full year. And, for most of that, time, though he was slowing down, the quality of his life remained good. Finally in August of '92, Spur winked out just two months shy of his sixteenth birthday. We've loved all our pets and all are special in their own way. But there'll never be another like Hotspur.
