Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994                   TAG: 9401290259
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MARTIE ZAD THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A&E PRESENTS `STORY OF DOGS'

The A&E/BBC co-production journeys back 20,000 years as it explores the spiritual importance of dogs to people around the world and their power as symbols throughout history.

Also noted are a dog's extraordinary intuitive skills and uncanny senses. The series brings us a dog with a sixth sense that appears to allow him to predict earthquakes, and another with the ability to detect its owner's epileptic seizures.

The series also stars some big names - Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Queen Elizabeth's corgies - as well as police dogs, seeing-eye dogs, hunting dogs and pedigreed dogs. It covers pooches that make their owners a lot of money, and those that cost their masters a fortune. Either way, canines make a big difference in the lives of their owners.

Michael Waldman, the series executive producer, traveled from Korea, Japan and Greenland to France, Australia and the United States for this compendium of stories. The series also includes photographer William Wegman's models, Bettina and Fay Ray, and generations of Lassies owned by Bob Weatherwax.

Then there are the questions of breeding, especially reflected in owners' concerns about wealth, class and social standing as they tinker with the color, size and shape of their favorite bloodline.

There are some 35 million dogs in the United States and even more dog lovers, many with obsessions that prompt them to frequent grooming parlors, subject their pets to cosmetic surgery, and establish, in Beijing, a dog zoo.