BANDIT HAS STAR POTENTIAL. OR SO HIS OWNER BELIEVES. SO WHY CAN�T HE EARN HIS KEEP BY LANDING A PLUM MOVIE ROLE? BY KATE SMITH

EVER thought about putting your pet to work? As the credit crunch bites and festive debts linger, those stinging vet invoices and mounting dog food bills can make an unemployed Fido seem like an untenable luxury. With this in mind, I have recently been considering the economic potential of Bandit, our family Dalmatian.

Since writing is my trade, I experiment first with canine reportage, filing an article on the perils of crossing the Atlantic with Bandit in tow. The Bark - a California-based magazine reputed to pay well - responds with a discouraging growl. "I am very disappointed that you use a collar and continuously refer to your dog as it'," writes the commissioning editor. "Your dog should be the centre of your life and is always referred to by name or he' or she'."

"Really?" I reply. "You should hear what my husband calls it." Not surprisingly, we don't get around to discussing fees and my foray into pet journalism has ended before it began.

Attempts to turn our pet into the family cash cow receive a further setback when the children begin to suspect that something is afoot. "What are you doing?" they ask. "Why the grooming sessions with Bandit and the guinea pigs, followed by all those close-up snaps taken with the digital camera?" And: "Why do you keep brushing Bandit's teeth?"

The truth is, I am now planning a more glamorous and high-profile income stream, having twigged that animals are required in all sorts of film, photographic and theatrical situations. I offer up Bandit to some acting and modelling agencies, always on the look-out for pets that can pout.

I discover that acting lessons are not necessary in feline film or on the canine catwalk. Only basic obedience is required. For a dog, this involves being able to follow the simple commands of "sit", "stay", "walk", and observe good manners on the lead. For a cat, it means following basic instructions.

Katie Rourke, of the Ascot-based Canine Film Academy, advises me that pet opportunities can range from still photo-shoots to walk-on parts in movies. "The fees vary a lot," she says, "from £40 for a photograph to, say, a pet food commercial where your dog might make £1000 a day."

As Bandit is more Scooby-Doo than Lassie, I decide the best approach is to pull no punches about his acting ability. "If it's a commercial, he excels at gulping down his food really fast without breathing," I say. "He is a very cute Dalmatian. But he would probably polish off the other dogs' food as well."

Encouragingly, Rourke tells me that Dalmatians are always in demand since "a lot of Dalmatian owners had a bad experience after 101 and 102 Dalmatians and are reluctant to lend them again. It was widely reported that some of them got the wrong puppies returned to them."

At this, I have a premonition of the children's faces, should Bandit fail to return to the family fold.

"Does he have basic standards of obedience?" Rourke asks.

"Only if there's something in it for him," I reply. "But he did pass a Perfect Pups' test, even if it was on the second re-sit."

Next, I talk to Joyce Miller, an Uddingston-based animal agent who has worked on major productions such as King Arthur, Gladiator, Hannibal, Taggart and Chewing The Fat. Originally a casting agent for human actors, she was drawn to the animal side because of her background in breeding and training horses. "My speciality is battle-trained horses," she says. This includes teaching them to fall, rear and die in action. "I train the animals to do exactly what the director wants," says Miller. "A few seconds of film footage can take months of training to produce."

And then, gloomily, she points out that "a certain level of obedience" is essential in prospective animal stars. "I find," she adds, "that many owners exaggerate what their pets can do. And their pet's particular party trick' may not help if the director wants other things."

David Stewart of Creature Feature animal agency in Dumfries has placed animals in Rebus and Trainspotting, cast a Doberman in Red Road and even a Clydesdale for Robbie Coltrane in Johnson & Boswell's Tour Of The Western Isles. His repertoire includes everything from dogs to ducks, horses to hamsters, elephants to eagles and bugs to baboons. Scotland, it seems, has a healthy market for animal actors. But perhaps not for my pet. Bandit's party tricks - catching sausages and howling along to the Coronation Street theme tune - don't crop up too often in Hollywood films or BBC costume dramas.

Still, it seems personality counts, too. And according to Stewart: "It is important how biddable and confident your dog is. One of our next projects is the Wicker Man sequel, Cowboys For Christ with Christopher Lee, to be filmed in Dumfries. Your dog or cat could earn £20-£30 per day's work."

But sometimes, he adds, all you can expect is a brush with canine fame. Owners of the hundreds of dogs seen running across country in a recent pet food commercial received only travel expenses. "I can't recommend that anybody does it for the money," warns Stewart. "You have to do it for the excitement of seeing your beloved pet on the big screen.

"Human extras are the same - they rarely break into triple figures, and sometimes earn nothing but do it for the excitement. For the bigger earners though, just like Hollywood, if one Border terrier starts to think he is Tom Cruise, there is another wanting to step into the breach."

With Bandit's acting career beginning to look as though it is over before his first screen test, I find myself wondering about the breeding potential of our guinea pigs. Especially when I talk to John Hughes, who took to hamster husbandry as a student, when the two male pets he'd been given for Christmas turned out to be of mixed gender.

"They bred within a couple of weeks," recalls Hughes, who is now a finance director. "Not knowing what to do, I just kept the young. Then nature took its course and they started to breed exponentially.

"Before I knew it I had shoeboxes full of hamsters all over the floor of my student digs. At one point they were stacked up like hamster skyscrapers.

"In desperation I took some down to the pet shop, intending to give them away. They fetched £3 each and soon I had built up a business selling hamsters around Glasgow pet shops and in newsagents' windows."

But despite the beneficial impact on his student overdraft, Hughes doesn't recommend the experience. "The hamsters took a lot of care," he advises. "And sometimes vets' bills wiped out my profit."

Disheartened by the prospect of our guinea pigs proving more of a cash drain than a source of financial gain, I turn again to Bandit, and am delighted when a job offer materialises. A care home has seen my dog-for-hire advertisement on the Gumtree classifieds website. They would like me to bring him in, so that residents can make a fuss of him in the garden.

It seems many of these elderly people used to have pets that they miss. As a result, they would love to spend some time with Bandit.

"Well, he is quite amusing, in a daft Dalmatian kind of way," I tell the care home manager. "And now that his career as a film and media star has gone to the dogs, I'm sure he would welcome the attention, and the chance to spend an afternoon catching sausages."

The thought of all those happy elderly people puts me off asking for a fee. And Bandit's impact on the family finances turns out to be precisely nil. Still, the children are delighted that their pet is being used to help others. And coming home at the end of each shift.