Sometimes climbing manufacturers create the strangest T-shirts! In 2005, Evolv Sports gave me a t-shirt to wear which I found to be very odd. The statement on the t-shirt was,

"Wiener dog not made for climbing, Evolv shoes are!"

​The statement was accompanied with a cartoon drawing of a wiener dog, which is actually classified as a Dachshund. I always thought the t-shirt was kinda lame, but I wore it from time to time to show my support toward my sponsor. A year later in January 2006, I received a phone call from the Suzuki car company. The phone call was actually from a film company that was going to be creating a car commercial for Canada that involved rock climbing in the commercial. I have helped with television commercials, advertisements, videos, and magazine/book publications before, but hearing it was a Suzuki commercial was quite exciting. I said yes without even thinking about it.

I met with the filming staff and collected information on what they wanted me to do for the commercial. I was not the main climbing star, but was the climber that was in the finish of the commercial by climbing up to the top of the cliff face, while I was being shown from the distance. I was also in charge of somehow raising and lowering two actors in the film shoot, to make it look like they were actually rappelling into, and out of, the area of filming. One of the main stars in this commercial, believe it or not, was a climbing wiener dog.

I met with the site coordinator and the location picked for the commercial was at Papago Buttes, Eliot Ramada area which is near the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona. Back then vehicles were allowed to drive in and park at the Eliot Ramada, but today the area is closed to vehicles, but people can still hike into the area which is about 1/8 of a mile distance. I was quite familiar with the rock face that site coordinator was insisting of filming, since I created a guide map for the City of Phoenix years previous, that they use in their search and rescue missions. Yes the mountain is rock, but it is quite crumbly and not really considered a rock climbing area. One or two beginner climbers/adventurous hikers a year die

on this wall since they scramble up it and either get stuck somewhere in the middle of the face in fear of continuing upwards, or can't figure out how to get back down and chance an improper descent path. The City of Phoenix Fire Department uses my MK map as a guide to safely get their fire department rescuers to the top of the mountain, where they then retrieve the stuck peoples off of the mountain via the many belay stations listed on the MK map.

The area of filming is a wall which is around 250 feet tall, so raising and lowering a climber/non-climber at that height on a crumbly rock face was out of the question in my mind. But I came up with an alternative plan by hiring one of the most creative climbing gadget riggers in town, my boss at the Phoenix Rock Gym, Paul Diefenderfer. Paul (Dief) has been hired by many construction companies, where he lowered and raised construction inspectors up and down cliff walls where new bridges and roadways were being built. Dief at the time was working with inspectors at the Hoover Dam bridge project, which the new bridge was completed about a year ago. Dief has created a device out of a sail boat winch which had the ability to safely raise and lower major amounts of weight. All I had to do was position/anchor Dief twenty or so feet above the actual filming area, and we were in business. We used two radios for communication between us, and also used visual hand signals as a secondary form of communication to give the film crew the action that they were looking for. The producer of the film was quite impressed with our climbing rigging and communication system that Dief and I came up with. The producer mentioned that he used climbing companies before, that had near disaster results to the camera equipment, the climbing riggers did not really know what they were doing, or it continually took extra hours to get the film talent into position. Dief's job was just sitting on his butt in a large cave/hueco on the climbing face for about 9 hours, winching the film talent up and down. I was the ground crew that got to be with all of the action. My job was making sure the talent/climbers were properly tied in, harness and gear looked proper for the shoot, everybody was guaranteed the highest level of safety, which included the climbers and film crew below.

The commercial was created to introduce the new Suzuki Grand Vitara. A macho climber arrives at the mountain, and starts to scale it exclaiming that the terrain is rugged just like his Suzuki Grand Vitara. Suddenly a regular guy who has his child in his backpack, groceries in his arm, and his dog hanging from his harness rappels into the scene exclaiming that the Suzuki Grand Vitara is made for regular guys too. The regular guy continues to rappel out of the scene leaving the macho climber stunned. The macho climber continues to scale the cliff face to the top to show the height of the mountain. All of this was for commercials being aired only in Canada, and the speaking was all in French.

I was handed a script that showed storyboards for each scene to be filmed, and then it dawned on me on how many millions of dollars that Suzuki was pouring into this one commercial. I was instructed to meet at a resort in Scottsdale with the wardrobe department to get fitted in many different outfit possibilities. The shoot date was for January 25, 26, and 27 of 2006. January 27th was the main filming date where the 25th and 26th were for setting up the shoot. The City of Phoenix Parks Department allowed the film crew to build a wooden stage with rail tracks, below the filming area for their $100,000+ camera boom to sit upon. I set up my anchors and Dief and I made sure that we tested his devices and got the safety approval from the producers and directors.

The Eliot Ramada area became a city of RVs and shade tents. There was RVs for wardrobe, make-up, two food catering trucks, directors RV, film equipment trucks and then the RV for the wiener dog rolled in. This RV was the biggest of them all and it was all for the dog! This particular wiener dog was famous for many commercials that it was filmed in, besides magazines and videos. The wiener dog was definitely the star of the shoot. A special ergonomic harness was created for the dog, and also a climbing helmet. The selected talent was all in place, and then the shoot happened. It was a beautiful day and everything went well except for the child that was hanging in the backpack carrier was being difficult and uncooperative. The directors tried to make the best of what they had. The next day I received a phone call from the production manager that the shoot had to be redone due to the child problem.

I was instructed to meet with the production staff at the Scottsdale resort around dinner time, to view a new set of kid possibilities that were selected for the reshoot. I was a little late arriving at the meeting since I had to pick up my kids from school, get some food into their 

bellies, and then get to the resort through rush hour traffic. My kids were tired and irritable and wanted just to go home and were not interested in this meeting that I had to go to. But tough beans kids! We arrived to notice five new children that were with their parents that were selected as the new talent possibilities. The child that did not cry when being placed into the child carrier was going to be the child selected for the shoot. My youngest son Nicholas was having fun playing on the resort couches and crawling all over one of the directors named Brian. Brian was really nice, but was getting irritated of Nicholas playing with him. Brian's worries escalated as he watched the child talent problem continue. I could see in each of the parents eyes that they were bummed when their child was not selected for this high paying opportunity of having their child in a commercial. All of the new five possible kids were crying due to the child carrier uncertainty, and they were not even dangling off of a cliff wall yet. ​

The overall director, Brian and main staff were really bummed out and were trying to come up with a plan 'B' to this major problem. At the same time my son Nicholas was still playing his games. I apologized repeatedly to Brian for Nicholas's rather rude behavior. I remember the directors words perfectly as Brian jumped out of his seat pushing Nicholas to the side and said to him "Nicholas you have to stop that NOW," then Brian paused, smiled and exclaimed "Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas, can you get into that child carrier?" Nicholas went over, slipped into the child carrier, was put onto the actors back and then Nicholas said" What's the big deal, no problem?" Brian ran over and kissed Nicholas on the forehead and had the hugest smile on his face. Brian and the staff were glowing in excitement! My son Nicholas was at that moment hired as a main talent for the Suzuki commercial, that was shot the next day. Nicholas had to hang out in that child carrier for 5 hours during all of the filming, but he was having fun with the whole experience, especially having a wiener dog next to him the whole time. The dog and Nicholas were rested in between shots, then Dief raised them up back into position.

On the final day of shooting, I wore the Evolv Wiener Dog t-shirt and everybody could not believe the shirt was created before this commercial came to be. The filming was a success! All of us got paid many thousands for our parts in the shoot, and Nicholas to this day still receives royalty checks every time that commercial is even mentioned. Nicholas's pay has exceeded $11,000 for his 5 hours of work. We allowed him to buy a few toys and games with the money, and the rest went into his college fund. Trevor Cornish with Spy Films was the overall Director. On a sad note, the assistant director/producer named Brian Atkinson at the time was quitting smoking. He was chewing Nicorette gum to relieve his cigarette cravings, and shortly after the commercial was completed, he died from what they believe was from Nicorette Gum intoxication. Chewing over 30 pieces of gum per day. Brian was in his mid 30s