Robert Dollowet spent most of the 1980s training dogs in the US military; now he's mobbed by hundreds of fans at Australian pet shows , all desperate to meet his famous cat Didga. "She loves the attention," Dollowet, better known as Catmantoo online, tells 9honey Pets from his home on the Gold Coast. Didga is curled up on a cat tree nearby, getting her beauty sleep before the Sydney Cat Lovers Festival next weekend, where hundreds of their 1.
6 million social media followers will turn out just to meet Dollowet and his feline friend. READ MORE: Australia's most popular dog breed branded 'worst nightmare' To say his life has changed a bit in the last 40 years is an understatement. Dollowet always had a "knack for animals" and started out as a dog trainer in the US Air Force before moving to Los Angeles to work in the film and TV industry.
Despite working in Hollywood, the job was far from glamorous. "I trained animals for free, I cleaned kennels," he reveals. "And then if eventually one of my animals that I trained got a part in a film, I would go along with it.
If they got parts, then I got work and got paid." Even when he was working on big-budget movie sets, Dollowet spent a lot of time sitting around backlots and being told to 'hurry up and wait'. "The reality is, we'll sit around for 10 hours and do nothing," he laughs, "you're taking naps, you're reading, you're mingling, you're networking.
" But Dollowet was a great trainer and worked his way up the ranks quickly, working with everything from pigeons, to lions, elephants, and of course cats and dogs. On one memorable occasion, he even had to handle a tarantula on the set of Murder She Wrote , despite having never worked with the eight-legged critters before. For 10 hours, the cast and crew asked him questions about the creepy crawly before he was finally called onto set for the tarantula's big scene.
Dollowet had to convince the arachnid to follow a specific path across a table and came up with a bizarre but effective way to get the job done. READ MORE: Renee paid $1k for her dream puppy, then the breeder disappeared "I told the production assistant to go get me a straw from craft services," he recalls, which he used to blow gentle puffs of air at the spider to push it in the right direction. "When it got to the [right spot], I ran around the front and a little puff of air, and it stopped.
Nobody told me to do that, I just somehow figured it out." They got the scene filmed in a single take. Dollowet quickly built a reputation as a great animal handler and behaviourist, so when he decided to leave the entertainment world behind ("you make great money, but it's not that glamorous") he was able to cash in on some celebrity connections.
He set up a dog training business in Malibu and worked with the likes of Olivia Newton-John, James Cameron and Pamela Anderson for years on end. "In Hollywood, once you've proven yourself to be reliable and good at something, you get passed around [these celebrities]," he reveals. Stars appreciated that Dollowet wasn't star-struck by them, nor did he beg for pictures and autographs from them - he just turned up, trained their dogs, and was damn nice about it.
"I regret it now, of course," he laughs, "I would love selfies with all the people I worked with!" Clearly some of Newton-John's Australian attitude rubbed off on Dollowet, because he eventually traded Malibu's beaches for the sandy shores Down Under. In 2012, he kicked off his Catmantoo YouTube channel showing off all the amazing tricks he could teach rescue cat Didga and the duo quickly became internet celebrities. Didga now has a Guinness World Record for doing the most tricks (24) in one minute and fans flock to events like the Sydney Cat Lovers Festival just to see her perform and learn from Dollowet.
"Cats and a few dog breeds need a certain approach, and you just have to be a little more patient," he says, but most cats can be trained to perform basic commands. "You have to just know how to be patient , work with the animal, and each day, get the animal closer and closer to your goal." Most simple commands take weeks, if not months, of consistent training to teach any animal and owners need to be patient and chip away at the training every day if they want to see results.
More complicated tricks like the ones Dollowet teaches Didga can take more than 18 months to fully master, so don't feel put out if your pet doesn't have 'stay' figured out in a few days. READ MORE: 'Unknown number sent me my own address': Rescue worker threatened Dollowet's social media pages and Patreon are stuffed full of tutorials to help guide owners through training their cats (or dogs), and he'll be sharing even more tricks of the trade next weekend at the Sydney Cat Lovers Festival. The event is returning to Sydney on August 24 and 25 at the Sydney Showground, with the Dog Lovers Festival happening right next door.
Dollwet and Didga have planned a show packed with tricks and training insights, followed by a meet and greet, and other pet experts like Dr Katrina Warren will be there too. More information and tickets are available here . FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE : Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel.
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