In a Lather: Podcast 
Third Grade Social Studies 
Television
Pup Culture
Next to him, Scooby Doo is a don’t, and Lassie can stay home: By bringing literary classics to life, Wishbone has won over parents and kids alike.
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Each of the forty shows has been an intense affair to put together, says Duffield. The set and costume crews work long hours to ensure that the props and clothes are authentic. For the daydream scenes, all the period sets are created from scratch, from the Russian Theater of “Rushin’ to the Bone” (Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General) to the historical English village, complete with pub and thatched-roof cottage, of “Golden Retrieved” (George Eliot’s Silas Marner). And Wishbone has enough hand-tailored ensembles to rival any member of the Royal Family. No outfit is used twice. “Rick wants to keep the characters as individuals,” says costume designer Steven Chudej.
Duffield is just as particular about which works of literature to use. “We try to mix a number of elements: author gender, author ethnicity, variety of setting,” he says. “And there has to be something archetypal about each book: the genre, the structure, the character.” On the day of my visit, for example, Duffield settled into his director’s chair (labeled, naturally, “Alpha Dog”) to oversee production of “Moonbone,” an episode based on Wilke Collins’ The Moonstone. “Some people might call it an obscure novel,” Duffield told me, “but in fact it is the first whodunit novel ever written. Every whodunit since is patterned on that book.”
Countless members of the more-than-one-hundred-person crew scurried around the set assuming their positions. Before shooting started, the set designers gave us a tour of the permanent sets, such as Pepper Pete’s Pizzeria and Wishbone’s house, as well as sets created specifically for this episode, such as a lush English garden. They encouraged Henry to try to lift what appeared to be a marble balustrade, and he was amazed (as was I) that the incredibly realistic-looking prop is made of packing foam.
Finally, Duffield gave the go-ahead, and the cast did several run-throughs of a scene that takes place in an elaborately decorated dining room. Each time, Soccer listened to his cue and got it right, and each time, his owner-trainer, Jackie Kaptan, extended a little tin cup with a long handle and offered him a reward. Kaptan says that Soccer, like other dogs, is motivated mostly by treats—he likes dried kibble and boneless grilled chicken—but other positive reinforcement is also effective. “Soccer wants to listen to me,” she explains. “He’s not any smarter than any dog in someone’s household. He has just had a lot of time put into him, and he has a strong desire to please. He gets very worried if I say, ‘No way!’ He’s not a dog that wants to be wrong, so I try not to use the word ‘no.’ ”
Between takes, Chudej’s costumers descended on the set to fit Soccer for a public appearance. They slipped on his red cowboy shirt and then—this was too much!—little leather chaps. Soccer’s tail wagged happily the entire time. “Costumes aren’t a problem for him,” says Kaptan. “The costumers are great, and the clothes are on and off very easily. The pants were a little different. When he jumps in pants, they hike up and he looks back like, ‘What’s following me?’” Pants also mean a full strip-down for tree breaks.
All of this begs the question of how hard Soccer works. Hollywood obeys child labor laws; what about dog labor? It’s true that Soccer plays Wishbone 98 percent of the time (three other Jack Russells are used for stunts and still photos), yet Kaptan insists that he leads an extremely happy life. “The little guy spends every day with me,” she says. “He gets to play on the set, he gets quality time, he has his own room, he has a limit on how much he can work, he has his own air conditioning, and he flies first class in his own seat.” He also gets paid pretty well. Wishbone’s producers won’t disclose how well, but it’s enough to pay for a two-acre ranch near Plano, where Soccer lives when the show is in production. “He bought it,” Kaptan says proudly.
Soccer’s salary is but one line in Wishbone’s budget, which raises another question: the cost of staying on the air. During the past two years Congress has slashed the budget for public broadcasting, crippling programs of all types; in fact, in late 1995 production on Wishbone shut down, while Duffield went around hat in hand, and it didn’t restart until eighteen months later, when PBS managed to find enough money to help pay for the nine new episodes that will air this season.
Over time the shortfall has forced shows from Barney to Austin City Limits to rely more heavily on corporate underwriters. For the folks at Wishbone, at least, finding such funding has been somewhat problematic. Last year Plano-based Frito-Lay toyed with providing funding for the show, but only if it could promote Cheetos snacks during what amounted to commercial breaks. That trade-off was too much for PBS—and Wishbone—to bear. “Whenever you seek funding, you’re not asking for a donation or an endowment; those don’t exist anymore,” Duffield says resignedly. “You’re talking to marketing people. Deciding whether to fund a public television show is much like a decision to buy advertising.” And, apparently, Wishbone isn’t enough of a sexy ad buy, for no other corporate suitors have shown any interest. Duffield’s only consolation is that he isn’t alone. “The Magic Schoolbus lost its underwriters,” he notes wistfully. “And Mister Rogers lost its underwriters.”
Another potential funding source is the licensing of merchandise—an area where Barney, to name but one example, has made great strides. But here, too, Wishbone has come up short. Part of the problem is that Wishbone is a high-road sort of show, which means the producers are leery of anything that smacks of crass commercialism. “Marketing is always a matter of balance,” Duffield says. “The whole point of marketing beyond the show is to give kids the opportunity to continue playing with literature through books and board games. Every time a company comes to me and wants to produce a Wishbone product, I have to weigh it: Is this an appropriate place for Wishbone to be? Sometimes I resist it, but sometimes I have to give in.” The larger problem, however, is that there simply isn’t enough money in licensing the Wishbone name to make a dent. “All the merchandising we could possibly do still wouldn’t cover the cost of the show,” Duffield says. “There are examples of kids’ entertainment projects that generate millions and millions, but those are the exceptions. We could not approach with merchandising the kind of money we need to keep us going.”
For now, until a solution to the funding problem can be found, Henry and I and other Wishbone fans will have to content ourselves with mostly reruns. Duffield, however, is optimistic about the future. “There’s always a sense of possibility in Texas,” he says. “Texas isn’t plugged in to a particular media culture like Los Angeles or New York. It’s a very small world there. Here, we’re out on the frontier, doing our own thing. I’ve got kids, I’ve got animals, I’ve got special effects. Being in Texas allows me to do this.”
Spike Gillespie, a columnist for the Prodigy computer network, is the author of All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy, which will be published next year by Simon and Schuster. 
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