The other Poldark star with a hairy chest
He’s been in four TV hits and wears more make-up than his co-stars. Meet the Battersea Dogs Home mutt who’s now set to conquer Hollywood
HE’S waltzed with Emma Watson, run rings around Eddie Redmayne and even (steady ladies!) nuzzled Poldark star Aidan Turner’s rippling chest. With Hollywood at his feet, one might imagine the British actor of the moment is in danger of letting it all go to his head.
Indeed, when I arrive at his home in rural Oxfordshire, the young star is nowhere to be seen.
When he eventually does turn up, 20 minutes late, it turns out he’s been having a lie-down. He pads through the door with barely a glance in my direction, curls up on the sofa beside his agent and promptly closes his eyes. It’s frustrating, rude even. But, then who could really blame him? Because this golden-haired young prodigy is not even human. He’s an adorably capable three-year-old super-pooch.
If you haven’t heard of Barley the dog, chances are you’ll have seen him several times.
Not only is this talented canine taking over our TV screens — starring in hit series such as Poldark, Midsomer Murders and Undercover, the BBC’s current political thriller starring Sophie Okonedo — but he’s about to become a Hollywood heart-throb, too.
In the next 12 months, Barley — who made his silver screen debut in the Moby Dick-inspired In The Heart Of The Sea — will appear in three of the most hotly anticipated films of the year: Beauty And The Beast, starring Emma Watson; J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, with Eddie Redmayne; and the latest Jason Bourne film, alongside Matt Damon.
It’s enough pressure to turn the most experienced actor to jelly. But not Barley. The Lurcher crossbreed, owned by Gill Rawlings, an animal trainer and canine agent-to-the-stars, doesn’t seem fazed by his new-found fame.
‘He loves working,’ explains Gill, who has provided animals for projects including Downton Abbey and Pirates Of The Caribbean.
‘He’s a real live wire — bold and outgoing with bags of energy, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him asleep now. I knew within a week of getting him that he was special.’
As if proving her point, Barley’s eyes flick open and he’s off the sofa in an instant, bounding around the living room, sniffing the photographer’s camera equipment and wagging his tawny tail.
Though most owners are delighted when their pets can sit, stay and heel, Barley’s tricks are far more impressive.
He can walk on his hind legs, cover his eyes with one paw, shake hands and even sit back with his forelegs in the air, a pose Gill likens to ‘an old man in a pub’ — all in response to the slightest hand movement or command from her.
A flick of the wrist and the words ‘Take a hike’ make Barley perform one of his most popular tricks: lifting his back leg and, well, pretending to mark his territory.
‘You’d be surprised how many scripts call for that,’ laughs Gill. ‘Of course nothing comes out, so he can do it anywhere — and they use computer graphics to add the finishing touches later.’
But Barley is far more than just another doggie trickster. It’s his knack of getting into character and forming a bond with actors and audiences that has directors queuing to cast him.
Barley’s screen career started, like most do, in adverts — for DFS furniture and Churchill Insurance — but it was his TV roles, on Paul O’Grady’s For The Love Of Dogs and, latterly, Poldark, that marked his big break.
His starring role as scruffy mongrel Garrick, the loyal companion of Demelza (played by Eleanor Tomlinson), won such praise that Barley now has a Facebook fan page — a sure sign he’s on track to be the next Lassie.
Gill says: ‘Eleanor was particularly good with him, always fussing and playing with him.’
BARLEY has his own trailer — a van which Gill and her four-strong team drive up and down the country — equipped with the usual A-list amenities: a designer wardrobe (blankets), king-size bed (doggie basket), the finest beverages (fresh water) and luxury treats (stag antlers to chew between takes).
Bizarre as it sounds, he starts each day in the make-up chair.
‘We use a huge amount of make-up on our dogs,’ Gill explains.
‘In the same way you have to dirty down or smarten up actors for the cameras, you do it to dogs.
‘For Poldark and In The Heart Of The Sea, he was covered in hair gel and then coated in mud.
‘The gel makes his hair look matted and greasy and helps the mud to stick.
‘You can also use chalk or talcum powder to make him look older.’
Barley doesn’t mind the make-up, she insists — in fact, one of his favourite roles is playing a dead or wounded dog, when he is covered in fake blood. ‘It tastes sweet and he can safely lick it off. We have to keep re-applying it or he’ll have eaten it all before the cameras start rolling.’
Though it’s Barley who’s been keeping Gill busy of late, she has another 44 dogs on the books of her firm, Stunt Dogs, which she set up 30 years ago.
She also has cats, birds, deer, sheep, ducks, goats, llamas, pigs, rats and insects — all in demand.
Thankfully, most of the creatures live with their owners elsewhere and she simply acts as their agent and trainer.
She owns ten stunt dogs herself, including Barley, but even they don’t live with Gill full time.
WHEN he’s off-duty, Barley can be found 15 minutes down the road with a foster family, whose children treat Barley as their own. Gill retains ownership and pays his living expenses, picking him up when she needs him.
Having so many animals is costly — but Barley more than makes up for it with earnings of his own, though Gill won’t be drawn on how much.
Is her A-list star paid £1,000 a day? I venture. £10,000? £100,000? ‘It’s nowhere near any of those,’ she says. ‘All I will say is that I make a decent living out of it, as do the people I employ.’
They, too, work hard to earn their keep. To make Barley and the other animals feel comfortable, Gill and her team often spend entire days on set, in full costume to blend with the cast.
As a result, they’ve had unexpected cameos in well-known series and films.
‘I once played Nicole Kidman’s arm,’ Gill says, proudly. ‘In Cold Mountain [the 2003 film also starring Jude Law and Renee Zellweger] they needed someone to be attacked by a chicken. When you see it pecking her arm, that’s mine.’
She also stood in for an actress who had to have a scorpion crawl up her leg in Midsomer Murders and played a villager on the Angelina Jolie film Maleficent, while one of her trainers had to be Michael Fassbender’s stunt double. Not that Gill is remotely star-struck.
‘Ha!’ she blurts. ‘I spent last week doing night shifts on the set of The Mummy, in the rain, working with all sorts of creepy crawlies.
‘I’m often up at 4am and not home till 10pm. You spend all day looking after animals. It’s about as far from glamorous as you can get.’
It’s not easy for Barley either but Gill makes sure he rests between takes and is replaced by a stuffed toy any time the camera pans out.
For all the ‘hardships’ of Hollywood, however, nothing compares to Barley’s horrible start in life.
He was abandoned — Gill prefers the word ‘gifted’ — on the doorstep of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in London at seven months old, after his owner’s young son apparently developed an allergy to his fur.
‘B ******* ,’ says Gill, then catches herself. She has strong views on abandoned animals, especially those
given up by owners who can’t cope with their excessive energy. ‘Why, oh why, do people buy dogs if they can’t look after them?’ she says despairingly, fondling Barley’s silky ears. ‘I can’t abide it. Just as I can’t abide the “anti” brigade, the people who say it’s cruel to have working dogs.
‘Barley is still the same dog he always was — he’s just trained. He has a very happy life.’
Gill was introduced to Barley in November 2013, by a friend at Battersea — who keeps an eye out for ‘special’ dogs on her behalf. ‘I need dogs with lots of drive who look good on camera. Black fur isn’t good, neither is a dog who’s too shy or slow to learn.’
She brought him back to her semidetached house in Clifton, a village in Oxfordshire, which doubles as her training school — and work began.
‘It all happens here,’ she says, pointing at the carpet of her living room, which, I note, is pale beige — surely ill-advised for doggie training? ‘In the summer we train them in the garden, but in the winter when it’s cold and wet, we do it inside. I get the carpet professionally cleaned twice a year.’ Gill’s house is unusually well-kept, with none of the smell or stray hairs you might expect.
But tell-tale signs are everywhere, from the dog-proof covers on sofas to a wall covered in Crufts rosettes — and a bag of sausage slices (used as rewards for Barley) on the mantelpiece.
The phone rings incessantly and we are repeatedly interrupted by assistants, debating things like whether a dog can be trained to jump between buildings or untie a neckerchief. ‘They haven’t come back on those snakes they want for Midsomer Murders,’ one yells from the kitchen. ‘And Sonia wants to know if they want Dodger for Batman?’
Amid the chaos, it takes just a few weeks to teach dogs like Barley the basics, and three to four months for more complicated skills, such as playing dead or holding up a paw.
Gill — who grew up working with horses in Kansas, before moving to the UK and qualifying as a trainer — maintains any dog, no matter how boisterous, can be taught. ‘A lot of people say I’m lucky he’s so wellbehaved, but he wasn’t like that when I got him. He used to wheel around in here doing the Wall of Death and bouncing over the furniture.
‘A lot of time, patience and effort has gone into making him the dog he is today.’
She uses a ‘bait stick’ in training, which is a short rod on which she skewers pieces of frankfurter, to hold in Barley’s eye line. ‘It’s like having his nose on a string,’ Gill explains. ‘I stand behind the camera and dangle it in front of him. When he’s done the trick, he gets to eat it.’
She trains him to deal with distractions — horses, gunfire and crowds — by practising in her garden, yelling and banging things together.
‘My neighbours must think I’m mad,’ she says with a grin.
There’s no chance of him disappearing with a canine co-star, either: Barley has been neutered — something Gill believes avoids the risk of unsuitable owners buying his offspring simply because of who he is.
‘His next big project is a film about the Bronte sisters,’ Gill reveals. ‘Beyond that, who knows? The sky’s the limit. I just wait for the next call.’