Check The Gate

Gidget was a star.

She truly enjoyed being in front of the camera; that’s where she came alive. She was a consummate professional on the set, and she won the hearts of her directors and crew. During her days on the Taco Bell shoots, no one was allowed to talk, move equipment or walk around. You could hear a pin drop when Gidget walked, off leash, onto the sound stage. She would trot over to the raised set, move through the crew and find the camera – and nine times out of 10, she’d be sitting or standing in front of the camera before I caught up with her! She commanded attention, and everyone who met her fell in love with her.

One of the reasons Gidget was so comfortable and confident on set was that I treated her like a big dog from the very start. It’s so easy when you work with small dogs to just pick them up and carry them around, but I made sure Gidget walked everywhere. She definitely had a big-dog attitude.

Gidget loved Moondoggie, the Chihuahua who played Bruiser in Legally Blond 1 & 2, so it was a fun shoot on LB2 when they both worked together, especially at the end of the movie when they reunite. We kept them apart for a couple of days so they would greet each other and play naturally. It was a sweet scene, and you could totally see how happy she was to see him.

The most challenging aspect of working with Gidget was cold weather. Chihuahuas need warmth, and this was a dog who could sunbathe in 100-degree heat and not pant! Working with her on the Taco Bell/Godzilla campaign on Wall Street in Manhattan when it was 2 a.m. with snow flurries was the absolute worst. She had sweaters and jackets and booties and microwave-heated discs that went inside a fleece sleeve she laid on, and we had huge jet-engine-type heaters that blasted heat in her direction, and of course she had her own heated trailer, but we made sure that the time she spent outside was very limited. Her “look” was very important to the campaign, so if her ears were slightly back or to the side, the shot wouldn’t work; having her ears perked up and forward was the ideal, and for that she had to be happy!

Gidget’s life was full of adventure, from riding in limos to flying on Taco Bell’s private jet and staying at the finest hotels (where she loved to scoot at lightning speed up and down the long hallways) to gracing the red carpet at movie premieres. She rang the opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange and added her paw print to the 100-year-old book that has been signed by U.S. presidents, dignitaries and thousands of celebrities who have also rang the bell.

At one Taco Bell convention, Gidget walked onto a vast stage in a huge stadium all by herself to meet R2-D2 from Star Wars. She hit her mark perfectly, stayed there while the robot talked, then exited on cue while thousands of people cheered and applauded. Gidget also held her own when she was set adrift in a Chihuahua-size remote-controlled boat on Lake Powell for a Taco Bell shoot. It was all fun to her, and she loved every minute of it.

Gidget’s fame extended to articles in People magazine, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Advertising Age and many other publications. She was photographed by the best: The directors of photography on her Taco Bell shoots included Jeffrey Kimball (Top Gun, Mission Impossible II) and Guillermo Navarro (Pan’s Labyrinth), and her still photographers included William Wegman, who shot her alongside one of his famous Weimaraners. She was featured in a question in the 1990s version of “Trivial Pursuit,” and celebrities such as Antonio Banderas and Reese Witherspoon were just as excited to meet her as their own fans are to meet them.

There will never be another Gidget. Everywhere she went, she stole hearts and made people smile.

Her star will shine forever ...