Providing animal antics on the big screen

Kathy Sidjakov worked on major movies filmed in Northern California for more than two decades, but she was never the star. And yet, some of her students had their moments.

A self-styled “animal teacher,” Sidjakov trained 15 dalmatians to perform a circus act in the 1988 Francis Ford Coppola film “Tucker,” starring Jeff Bridges as maverick car designer Preston Tucker.

“We had the dogs jumping and dancing in a circus Tucker had on his estate. It was really to show how eccentric he was,” recalled Sidjakov, 61. “It took two months to train the dogs for that scene.”

By the time she retired in 2000 after 25 years of show business, Sidjakov had wrangled seagulls, snakes and even flies for the movies.

“In ‘Getting Even With Dad,’ (a 1994 comedy) there was a scene with flies on a garbage can,” Sidjakov said. “We had to hatch them, catch them and deploy them.”

The Rohnert Park trainer said she always worked closely with the Humane Society to protect she animals used in filming, even the flies.

The script for the 1998 film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” called for a scene in which Sean Connery, playing Indy’s father, stirred a flock a seagulls to take flight by flapping an umbrella at them.

“They were trying to round up seagulls, and they couldn’t,” Sidjakov remembered, “so I said, ‘Why not go where the seagulls are?’ We went out to the Cotati dump, and I had two border collies circle the seagulls and face them toward the umbrella.”

Sidjakov always worked behind the scenes, but sometimes she made it all the way to the screen. In “Village of the Damned,” when all of the town folk went to sleep, so did their animals. So Sidjakov, there to handle the animals, had to pretend to fall asleep, too.

One of Sidjakov’s favorite human stars to work with was high-energy comic Robin Williams, who turned out to be friendly and accessible.

“He really loved the animals, but when he got manic, one of my dogs would react to that and want to attack, so Robin had to use a very calm voice,” she said.

When Sidjakov brought animals to the set, she tried to keep them from distracting the crew, but sometimes the crew distracted the animals.

“Animals cheer up the set,” she said, “but I had to bring a decoy dog and let the crew pet that one so I could save my star dog and let him rest until it was time to work.”

Born in San Francisco and raised in Marin County, Sidjakov remembers having few human playmates as a child.

“I was brought up by a Malamute,” she joked. “I always had a way with animals. I taught myself how to work with them.”

While working on a print ad for the Purina pet food company, training a cat and dog to pose, Sidjakov caught the attention of an agent and began making television commercials. Soon, she was working regularly on films and Northern California-based TV shows such as “Nash Bridges.”

Now she runs her two businesses, Animal Teacher, schooling clients on how to teach their own animals, and Animal Star Productions, making professional videos or portraits of clients’ animals.

“I call myself an animal teacher, because I believe we can learn from them and they can learn from us,” she said.

Sidjakov lives in Rohnert Park with her husband, Nicholas Sidjakov IV. Their grown son, Nicholas Sidjakov V, and his wife, Aly, live in Forestville.

For the past year, Sidjakov has been working with Scout, a 10-year-old American Paint Horse that she boards at the Destiny Arabians ranch outside Cotati.

“I’ve been observing Kathy practice with her horse and found it interesting,” said Kathryn Wickstrom, co-owner of Destiny Arabians. “Anyone who can train animals to do things by word and command is intriguing. She’s very gentle and kind with them.”

Sidjakov believes the first step in training an animal is figuring out how the animal learns, observing closely to discover the animal’s own language and picking up on unspoken cues. She recently held a teaching seminar for horse owners at Destiny Arabians.

“Part of it is undoing whatever people have done to the animal,” she said. “Animals are very smart, and once they learn how to learn, it goes very fast.”

Sidjakov uses a clicker to prompt responses from Scout and treats to reward him. Scout now bows, counts and even manipulates a few props. At the root of this training, Sidjakov said, is making the horse feel comfortable and trusting.

“The animal is working from a calm state, not fear,” she said.

As proof of her method’s success, she related a recent ride on Scout at Ragle Ranch Park in Sebastopol.

“We were on a narrow bridge, and when we got to the other end, there were steps down. Scout couldn’t go down steps, we couldn’t turn around or go back, and there wasn’t room for me to get off,” she said.

“So I talked to Scout softly and got him calm, told him he could do it and he jumped six feet to safety. He listened to me.”

For more information, go online to animalteacher.com or animalstarproductions.com.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.