Walt Disney had a chow!

[LEO's mum]

Did anyone know that Walt Disney had a chow? He got it as a Christmas present for his wife, place it in a hat box for her surprise. She loved it to bits and it never left her sight. Went to the preview of the Walt Disney Family Museum around the corner which opens publicly in October. Seems he was a very decent man. So much material shown. It took us 4 hours to walk through w/o much of a crowd and I skipped most of the audio things as it was getting too much. Highly recommended.

link: http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html

[kingalls]

Is there a specific link that shows Walt's Chow Chow?

[LEO's mum]

I did a google search before posting the original thread, but couldn't find it. He looked like one of the older chows in sepia coloured photos. Short haired and long-ish muzzle or Shiba-ish looking w/ a tad longer coat and larger size. Seems a red. You can find him at the exhibit when the museum opens in October.

[Boogie and Linda]

That is cool. I didn't know that.

[chewfozz]

Lady from Lady and the Tramp was based off of the chow that Walt Disney had bought for his wife. They had a hard time replicating the details of the chow so they made the movie version a cocker spaniel.

[chowhuskylass]

I believe Elvis had a chow too, and it had its very own jet, wonder what other celebs past and present had chows?

[lola chow]

Sigmund Freud had one to xx

[Sirchow]

Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra both owned chows here in the UK too.

[Lobis Cunami]

Georgia O' Keeffe had two Chow Chows that lived with her in Mexico. She may not been in the Film industry, but she was a famous Artist.

[lovechows55]

I flew to San Francisco for the preview opening of the Walt Disney Family Museum and this was the absolute highlight of my trip. All of the museum was fantastic but when I saw the photos of Sunnie on the wall, I was just ecstatic. It was so hard not to break their "no photography" rules; I so badly wanted to take a photo of Sunnie. She was just adorable. And, listening to Walt's story about how be researched the breed because Lilly didn't want a dog at first and then hid the chow puppy at Roy's until Christmas was wonderful, too.

Walt and Lillian actually had two chows. Sunnie is in at least four photos at the museum. After they lost her, they loved her so much that they got another chow. Just think, when we watch dogs in Disney movies, how many other scenes were actually inspired by a chow?

[Tsunami22]

I think I've been waiting to share this story:

I used to be an english major and one of the poets that absolutely changed my life was Pablo Neruda. He was a chilean poet known mostly in the US for his political poems, but around the world for his odes and love poems as well.

I went to chile a couple of years back, visited his homes that are now museums and was happy to:

1) see a postcard picture of Neruda and a VERY chow-ish looking dog.
2) read in his memoir that he had a chow (I'm pretty sure it was a different one than in the picture) and
3) find his poem about his beloved dog passing away, reading it, and deciding it MUST have been a chow. He says it had a fan like tail! and was aloof and didn't bother him with jumping and slobbery kisses like a less refined dog!!

I always love hearing about what other famous people had chows, just like us!