BURST
The big news in the Aug. 21, 1976, Vancouver Sun was that Frank Sinatra had flown into town for his first Vancouver concert since 1957 .
It was the first show in the Pacific National Exhibition’s annual Star Spectacular of big name acts at the Pacific Coliseum, and was a great success.
But it overshadowed an even bigger moment in PNE history — the debut of the SuperDogs .
Frank’s audience was around 14,000. The SuperDogs drew only 200 to their first show, held in a parking lot beside the old B.C. Pavilion, then home toof the Challenger relief map.
But the SuperDogs’ fame has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where, 50 years later, they remain one of the PNE’s top attractions . This year, they’re doing 60 shows at the Agrodome between when the PNE opens Aug. 21 and closes Sept. 7.
Drawing in several thousand people per show adds up.
“Just in Vancouver alone, I would say we’ve entertained eight to 10 million people,” said Leonard Chase, who has been with the SuperDogs since 1990.
The SuperDogs empire has several touring shows — at the same time the SuperDogs is in Vancouver, there will be a SuperDogs show at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
They’ve been around so long, the show is on its third generation of hosts. It was started by Herb Williams, who is now 97 and has been retired since 2006.
Williams was working as an advertising executive in Toronto when he devised the SuperDogs in 1976. He was set to bring his champion show dog Shang the chow-chow to a dog show at the PNE, but ran into a problem.
“Program manager Brian Radcliffe said, ‘What do these dogs do?'” Williams said in 2002. “I said ‘Nothing particularly, they just look beautiful and walk around the room.’ He said, ‘I would like some dogs that do things.’”
Williams recruited dogs from the Hamilton Kennel and Obedience Club in Ontario, picked up a couple more in Ann Arbor, Mich., and then added the 24-dog Doberman Drill Team from Los Altos, Calif.
The SuperDogs were an instant hit. The dogs still looked beautiful, but also performed all sorts of tricks. If they misbehaved, all the better — everybody loves a dog with personality.
“These are dogs who just come out and play,” said Chase. “Everything we do is run, jump and retrieve. And dogs love to run; they love to jump; they love to retrieve. And we work all our events around those three elements.”
Chase said the secret to the enduring success of the SuperDogs is that it’s great family entertainment.
“Everybody’s looking for something to take their kids to, where their grandparents can go to, where they can enjoy together,” he said over the phone from his home in Montreal.
“It’s real family entertainment because the dogs are real, it’s not a circus. Nobody ever gets to do SuperDogs full time. They do it for a week or two, it’s their family pet they’re bringing out to show people how much fun they have with their dog.”
Williams was key to the initial success. Known for his loud suits and sharp wit, he could roll with the unpredictability of the dogs.
“Herb was an exceptional showman,” said Chase. “I always thought he was the Bob Barker of SuperDogs.”
But Williams knew the dogs were the real stars.
”You can’t structure the behaviour of the animals — that’s the genius of the show,” Williams said in 1994. ”You can come back and see every show at the PNE, and it’ll never be the same. You can’t predict how high they’ll jump, how fast they’ll run, how well they’ll retrieve or how much they’ll misbehave.”
Chase took over in 2006. Like Williams, he was a showman: in a previous life, Chase owned 12 waterbed stores in Quebec.
“I used to do my own ads on TV, and do flips in the air, lits d’eau bonne nuit (French for ‘water beds, good night’),” he said.
Now in his late 70s, he retired this year. His replacement is David Acker, and SuperDogs lives on.
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