Lassie's Boy Sidekick: Meet Jon Provost, aka Timmy

Jon Provost was the boy sidekick to the 20th Century's most-loved dog: Lassie. In the late 1950s and early 1960s a third of American households tuned in each week to watch Lassie, a whip-smart Collie, help Timmy get out of countless pickles. Lassie came to define the "perfect" dog. In this episode Provost, who is now 70, talks about working with a dog star, and about what he learned from Lassie's rather progressive trainer/owner, the famous Hollywood dog trainer Rudd Weatherwax. He and Annie also discuss his early exposure to the notion of a "therapy" dog, and his more recent work to bring attention to rescue dogs, Army dogs, and more. Annie ends the episode by reflecting on how Lassie impacted our cultural notions about dogs, perhaps not for the better, and reads from Jean Donaldson's book Culture Clash , about the Disney-fication of dogs and how a desire to anthropomorphize "man's best friend" has led to some huge errors in the way people attempt to train and understand the dogs who live with us. If you're enjoying School For The Dogs Podcast, please subscribe to it, rate it, and leave a review! Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash : https://amzn.to/2KNwH2n JonProvost.com Timmy's In The Well: The Jon Provost Story https://amzn.to/2ZAVxbL Get a free eBook: Three Secret Keys To Dog Training Success when you register for Annie's Free Master Class ! http://anniegrossman.com/masterclass You can find some old episodes of Lassie on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluWrXiVNks Rudd Weatherwax's obituary: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-02-26-me-25026-story.html --- Partial Transcript: Annie: 60 years ago, there was a TV show that was so popular, it's estimated it was watched in a third of American households each week. Its star, whose name was Baby, was a guy playing the role of a girl -- a nonhuman girl. That girl was, of course, Lassie. [Whistling - Lassie theme] Baby has long since left us. The show is only on in reruns. And today, most people have not heard of Lassie's famous trainer, Rudd Weatherwax , who was responsible for many of the 20th century's most famous dog actors, but last year, his best friend is still around and still hanging out with dogs like it's his job. Today, I have for you an interview with Jon Provost who played Timmy on the show Lassie for most of his childhood. He spoke to me about Weatherwax’s progressive and positive reinforcement based training methods, what it was like to grow up off camera with Lassie, and about his continued work with dogs. Fun fact, did you know there was actually never an episode where Timmy fell in a well, can you believe that? Before we get started, I just wanted to suggest that you go check out my brand new one hour long master class. It's called “Three simple things every dog owner needs to know to teach a dog quickly and easily without, force, pain, a major time investment or fancy equipment.” It's a presentation where I talk about how I got into dog training, how it kind of revolutionized how I see the world. You'll learn to think about the way your dog learns, specifically wow to think about the way in which your dog is learning thanks to classical conditioning all the time... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe