Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Ken-L-Ration Dog Show, March 1957

Have you ever taken a jacket out of your closet and discovered a $20 bill in one of the pockets? Well, today's pictures are kind of like that! These scans are years old, stuck in a folder that I forgot about, until now. And they're pretty cool too. 

As you can see, a group of kids and dogs are posing in front of Ken-L-Land, where guests could keep their beloved pets during their day at Disneyland. Ken-L-Ration dog food sponsored the place, and in March of 1957, they also held a dog show at the park. This wasn't a show full of perfumed, beribboned "foofie" dogs, these were good old regular dogs, with names like Max, Trixie, Sport, and Waldo. Yes, Waldo! It's a perfectly good name for a dog!


Nearby, more kids receive cans of dee-licious Ken-L-Ration dog food from an actor named Richard Simmons (I know!), who portrayed Sergeant Preson of the Yukon on television from 1955 through 1958. Presumably Ken-L-Ration was one of the sponsors of the program. The famous Berm is very visible here.


Let's zoom in a bit for a better look at those magnificent pooches! Notice the little "ticket booth" (or whatever it is) in the background. If you look closely, you can see that some of the kids are wearing pinback buttons...


.... like this one! They aren't terribly hard to find, but I'd like to think that mine spent a day in 1957 in Disneyland.


14 comments:

TokyoMagic! said...

I remember hearing the dogs barking in the DL kennel right after the trains exited Primeval World. I haven't heard that in many years now, so they must have soundproofed the kennel or sedated the doggies.

Nanook said...

Oh, Major-

These images are so much fun. I especially like the first image, as it appears this group of young dog wranglers is participating in the 'larger breed' competition. The two young lads standing with their Great Dane 'charges' looks all the more wonderful as the scale of things seems a bit out of whack.

I'm fairly confident the images of Man's (smaller) Best Friends was shot over at Holidayland - or near it.

Thanks, Major, for sharing these fun images.

K. Martinez said...

Beautiful dogs. The kids in the second image are dressed up real nice too. Great surprise find! Thanks, Major.

TokyoMagic! - I remember hearing the dogs barking at the kennel after exiting Primeval World too! I thought the kennel was gone long ago. Is it still located there?

TokyoMagic! said...

K. Martinez, HA...maybe not! Maybe that's why we don't hear them barking anymore! Didn't the narration on the train mention the kennel back in the day? Or am I imagining that?

TokyoMagic! said...

I just had to check. Yes, they do still have the kennel. $20 a day per pet and no overnight stays. Pets can even ride the tram from the Mickey and Friends parking structure. Wheeeeeee! But nowadays it seems all you have to do is get your pets designated as a "service animal" and you can take them wherever the heck you want...including into Disneyland.

Here's the address for more info on the DL kennel:

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/guest-services/kennel/

TokyoMagic! said...

I just read further down on the site and learned that guests may board birds, rabbits, some rodents and "many other animals." The kennels will not accept any animal that is illegal to own in the state of California including ferrets and venomous, exotic or wild animals.

Now I'm wondering why we no longer hear the dogs barking along the train route.

Alonzo P Hawk said...

I remember we put our weiner dog in there one time (in the 70's) and she looked kind of sad in the corner of the cage. Mom felt guilty the whole day.
Then we rode the monorail and when we passed the kennel (open to the front in those days) she could see the little brown blob from up in the air and mom almost lost it.
We checked out the dog and went home early.

Tried it with my dogs a couple of years ago, staff was really nice.

Great service for out of towners like us. Thanks for posting.

K. Martinez said...

TokyoMagic!, Thanks for the update on the kennel. Maybe Disney modernized the facility so there are no more open windows to hear the dogs barking. It is one of the many great aural memories from Disneyland past that I love.

As for the train narration mentioning the kennel, it's possible, but for some reason I always associated the mentioning of the kennel with the monorail narration as it passed by the building. Maybe I mixed them up.

Brad Abbott said...

These are great, and a nice surprise! The first shot, with the kids posed in front of Ken-L-Land is particularly amazing! I also like the sign in the upper left with the dog logo, which I don't believe I've noticed before.

I was just looking through some old e-mails a few weeks ago, and you had mentioned you had a shot with Sgt. Preston somewhere. Now I know where! Thanks again for tracking down these shots, and sharing them with everyone!

Anonymous said...

Great stories, I remember the barking too. I wanted to go visit the dogs, but apparently, you can only do that if one is your dog. Sigh.

JG

Major Pepperidge said...

TokyoMagic!, I sure don’t remember hearing dogs barking from the train, but I could have been oblivious, too.

Nanook, it’s funny because, as large as some of those dogs are, they are just the family “pup” to the kids, who have known them their entire lives.

K. Martinez, I am quite sure that there is still an animal kennel of some kind, though I don’t know if it is in the same location.

TokyoMagic!, I have four or five (or more?) vintage train spiels, and don’t think that the kennel was ever mentioned… after passing through the Grand Canyon/Primeval World diorama, there wasn’t much time to talk about the kennel and get passengers ready to disembark.

TokyoMagic! again, $20 a day seems pretty reasonable to me. If a dog truly is a service animal I have no problem with it being in the park, but man, I am sick of folks bringing their dogs into grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.

TokyoMagic! IV, now I have a place to board my llama. You don’t hear the dogs because each one gets a complimentary Xanax.

Alonzo, oh man. Going home early because of the dog? What a bummer! When we would go on family vacations, I hated putting our dog in a kennel, you could tell that he was miserable.

K. Martinez, if there really was barking all day, imagine working there! Maybe they wore ear plugs.

Brad Abbott, I had to go back and check, but that sign with the dog logo seems to have been there all along - although I never really noticed it either.

JG, funny… you could ride a futuristic Monorail, or an old-time steamboat, or take a rocket to the moon, but you wanted to visit the dogs! That’s little kids for you.

Nanook said...

"...there wasn’t much time to talk about the kennel and get passengers ready to disem'bark'. ". Oh, Major, you made a funny-!

Major Pepperidge said...

Nanook, I only wish I had made that pun on purpose (like Melissa would have)!

Nanook said...

Major-

As do we all-!