When Barbara’s word is law

Press, 9 March 1982, Page 21

When Barbara’s word is law

By

ROBIN STRINGER,

“Daily Telegraph”

A doctor's wife in her 70s has been catapulted from relative obscurity to international television stardom. Barbara Woodhouse is an animal trainer with a nononsense style. And her series on “Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way" for 8.8. C. Television has made her a household name. Last summer she was invited to Washington as the guest of Mrs Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s widow, and became the star attraction at Mrs Kennedy's annual charity dog show. In between times she inevitably found herself involved with the family's nine dogs. "I did not have time to train them all. but I gave a couple of the children and. dogs the six-minute routine and they will pass it on to the rest?’ Barbara said. For the uninitiated, Mrs Woodhouse, whose home is in Hertfordshire near London, is famous for being able to train any dog in the basic principles of obedience in six minutes. In her younger days, she thought two hours a reasonable time for breaking in a horse — and proved it with wild horses in Argentina. where she lived for many years. She has recently been seen on British television applying those principles in Hollywood — thanks to Yorkshire Television, which flew her to Beverly Hills to meet the stars and their pets. Viewers saw the indomitable Mrs Woodhouse take Tippi Hedren’s lions, Stephanie Powers’ parrot and Zsa Zsa Gabor's dog in her stride. She showed Britt Ekland how to control her hounds and was properly impressed by the tricks performed in her honour by David Soul (Hutch in “Starsky and Hutch") and his dog. Dublin. The coup de theatre, alas, went a little awry. Soul is wont to throw a ball over his house so that Dublin can run through the building and fetch it. But on this occasion

the ball stuck on the roof. Dublin was utterly confused and Soul himself turned retriever.

Mrs Woodhouse's training methods, in which sheer dominance of personality seems to loom large, are not invariably wholly successful. One of her most recent encounters was on a 8.8. C. Television request programme called “Jim’ll Fix It” in which she was asked to train a pig.

Pigs, of course, are highly intelligent animals and this particular pig, named Anna, was no exception. She used her considerable bulk to resist the attempts of Mrs Woodhouse, who is no pigmy weakling, to persuade her to

Anna did eventually oblige. But while Mrs Woodhouse did not lose this fascinating battle of wills, I adjudged the battle inconclusive. But there is no doubt that Mrs Woodhouse's abilities are proven. Her present fame is founded on the rock of 30 years experience running obedience classes, training animals for films and crystallising all that experience into book form. She believes that her talent with animals is a natural and exceptional gift. "I soothe away the animals’ nerves so that they lose any fear,” she says. “My tone of voice has always had a calming effect. Touch and telepathy come into it, too.” She maintains that an animal is not properly trained until it responds to its owner as perfectly as it does to her. “Obviously not everybody has my gift, but if they try to copy me it works well. The’ problem is that so many animals have been wrongly handled since birth.”

She acknowledges the importance of her upbringing in Ireland “where everyone had animals and was with them all the time. When I was young we had ponies and traps to drive, not cars."

. Had she not lived in Argentina she might never

have acquired, among other skills, the technique of breathing up a horse's nose to establish friendship. She learned the trick from the gauchos. “It works with some animals,” she says, “but it is.an insult to a dog or a cat. With them, you scratch the chest and go straight in, showing no fear. They can always scent the adrenalin if you are scared.” All this fund of knowledge, coupled with a highly discip-

lined approach towards pets that demolishes the traditional image of the sentimental British animal lover, was channelled into her 8.8.C.’ Television series. Its popularity may be judged by the fact that only four weeks after the series was shown on one of the 8.8.C.'s two television channels early in 1980. it was shown again on the other. Since then it has been bought by the Irish Republic, Australia, Bermuda, Canada,

Switzerland, New Zealand and, in part, by Sweden. As for the United States where it has been sold widely, “the Americans have gone bananas over it," says 8.8. C. Enterprises. Mrs Woodhouse’s new 8.8. C. series on training ponies was shown in Britain in the autumn of 1981 and has not yet been offered for sale outside the United Kingdom. As one would expect in such circumstances, she has

kept calm in'spite of the flood of invitations and letters seeking advice that threaten to engulf her. A born traveller, she has responded with enthusiasm to the opportunities for travel which her new-found fame has brought her. She has one regret. She no longer has any animals of her own. In this respect she is a victim of her own selfimposed disciplines. As she says: “I would never leave a dog.”