Kevin Perkins/PacificCoastNews.comCould you give us mere mortals an insight into celebrity puppy care? Especially when stars travel for the holidays?
—Proud Puppy Grandma, Mounds View, Minn., via the inbox
When it comes to their pets, celebrities such as Anna Paquin and Elisabetta Canalis pamper to near excess, with budgets to match.
So what's it like to live like a celebrity dog in December? Better than many humans:
I've already documented the great lengths that celebrities go to when it comes to keeping their pets close. But when stars must stray from their mutts, they generally drop off their dogs at a high-end pet palace.
A popular one in Los Angeles is LA Dogworks, which features a giant indoor dog park, a "den" with bunk beds for smaller dogs, hydrotherapy; aromatherapy; massage therapy; a full grooming salon, and so forth.
But when the holidays trot around, things get even more luxurious, particularly for celebrity dogs. For example, Elisabetta Canalis has a pair of pups that she dropped off personally over the Thanksgiving break. On Thanksgiving, the dogs were fed a human-grade turkey dinner.
"I actually ate it too," LA Dogworks founder Andrew Rosenthal tells me. "It tasted great."
And if a star gets lonely for her dog, the folks at LA Dogworks take videos of the pet and send them off to the owner. Case in point, husband-and-wife True Blood team Paquin and Stephen Moyer.
"Stephen Moyer has a dog named Splash, and he's in hydrotherapy," as are many older large dogs, Rosenthal tells me. "So I do videos of Splash in the water, with my iPhone."
Moyer loves getting the messages, Rosenthal says. (I asked whether Paquin and Moyer drop off their dogs themselves. Nope; an assistant does it.)
So how much does all this cost a star? The average is more than $100 a night, I am told. But really, for a taped hydrotherapy session for a dog sent over an iPhone, would you pay any less?