Before coming to the rescue of others on the silver screen, Ginger, the Spa City’s newest celebrity, had to be saved herself.

The spunky Irish terrier and star of the film “Firehouse Dog” became a famous rescue dog only after she received a second chance at life as a puppy.

Now, after months of acting lessons in Hollywood and filming in Toronto, the 4-year-old diva has retired in Nan Sullivan’s home near Saratoga Race Course as the movie hits theaters.

Hey, it’s a tough life, but some pampered pooch has to live it.

“This is rags to riches,” said Sullivan, who adopted Ginger on Sept. 2. “This is the girl from the other side of the tracks made good.”

Sullivan connected with Ginger through her summertime neighbor, Nikki Rowe, whose son, Devon Evans, is a Hollywood dog trainer.

“I waited a year for her while she was having her fame,” said Sullivan, the owner of a cleaning business.

Sulivan tells how Ginger went from being a hungry and neglected pup to a movie poster model.

Sullivan says the bouncy terrier was bred in a Missouri “puppy mill” before being sold to a pet store, then a family in California. But the family split up, and Ginger was left outdoors, sometimes unfed and without care.

Eventually, a neighbor rescued her from the yard, and with the owner’s permission, placed her with a breeder of terriers.

Meanwhile, the directors of “Firehouse Dog” were searching for an Irish terrier to play the role of “Rex,” a male dog, who, appropriately, gets lost, rescued and revived.

Boone’s Animals for Hollywood, an animal talent search company, discovered Ginger for the part.

Ginger is a wiry creature with a moist nose and a penchant for love. She’s highly intelligent, very active and has a loud bark. If Ginger was a human actress, you would probably have already seen or read about her against-the-odds success story in some glossy movie star magazine.

Her cinema training taught her tricks, including how to beg perfectly on two hind legs, stop, drop and roll, play dead and assume a commando-type position on her belly. All moves are ordered by hand signals and encouraged through dog treats.

But Sullivan didn’t adopt Ginger for her glamorous good looks or the number of stunts she can perform. Hollywood is famous for chewing and spitting out past stars, and Sullivan simply wanted to make sure Ginger had a proper place to live after movieland was through with her.

“She’s a rescue dog. That’s the most important thing,” Sullivan said.

In “Firehouse Dog,” a fire department takes Rex in, and the dog starts becoming part of the team, even responding to emergencies with crews.

“She was great. The dogs were great,” says Sullivan, whose red hair roughly matches that of her famous pet. “More dogs, less actors would have been terrific.”

The public can meet Ginger at the Maple Avenue Fire Company from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. The day will combine fire safety education with finding homes for orphaned pets, one of Sullivan’s life passions.

“Ginger’s a regular dog. She needs food. She needs water. She needs exercise. She needs lots of love,” Sullivan said.

It’s called Slentrol and it’s the first drug aimed at helping pudgy pooches shed some pounds.

Those at CSU College of Veterinary Medicine say it’s due out in May, but they’ve gotten a chance to take at a look at it.

“I don’t think this is a huge marketing ploy because when you have half of your dog population overweight, that’s a significant problem,” said CSU clinician Dr. Rebecca Ruch-Gallie.

Ruch-Gallie says America’s weight problem is now a problem in the canine population and causing illnesses like diabetes.

She says Slentrol may help. Created by Pfizer and approved by the FDA, it works by limiting the amount of fat that gets absorbed into the body and suppressing the dog’s appetite.

Ruch-Gallie says it’s really only meant for obese dogs and can only be used for up to a year, so she says the drug is not a cure-all.

“(People) really have to work on changing lifestyle and dietary management while they’re on this drug, so when they go off of the drug, the animal can have some hope of maintaining that weight,” said Ruch-Gallie.

A cat and her five kittens survived a night in a sealed box on the doorsteps of the Oregon Humane Society Wednesday night and now angry officials are doing everything they can to find out who abandoned them.

The animals were found by OHS workers Thursday morning inside a small storage container that was wrapped in duct tape and did not have any air holes.

“These animals could easily have suffocated,” said OHS investigator Kerri Tyler. “We want everyone to know that this is reckless behavior that endangers the lives of animals.”

Animal abandonment is Class B Misdemeanor punishable with $2,000 in fines and up to six months in jail.

OHS finds homes for unwanted cats and dogs every day, but the law requires that people bring the animals to the shelter during regular business hours and fill out the required paperwork.

“A person commits the crime of animal abandonment if he or she intentionally leaves a domestic animal at a location without providing for the animal’s continued care,” Tyler explained.

Like all other rare and endangered non-domesticated animals, baby White Tigers require extremely species-specific nutrition and care. They, require feeding every 2 hours, 24 hours a day for the first 3 weeks of their life.

The mother of these tiger cubs in El-Mahdia, Tunisia refuses to feed them or doesn’t have enough milk. Local veterinary authorities came up with the idea of entrusting a dog with the delicate mission. Leaving only one cub to its mother, two cubs were introduced to a local dog. The dog responded and soon took the cubs as her own.

The Bengal Tiger or Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is a subspecies of tiger primarily found in Bangladesh and India and also in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and in the south of Tibet. It is the most common tiger subspecies, and lives in a variety of habitats, including grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests and mangroves. Its fur is orange-brown with black stripes, although there is a mutation that sometimes produces white tigers. It is the national animal of both Bangladesh and India.

There are only 4000 white tigers in their natural habitat and 200 in captivity.

A rescue team navigated flooded farmland in a boat to save a 70-year-old woman and her dog from rising floodwaters and made another critical rescue, a pot of stew from the woman’s stove.

Geneva Taptto frantically began calling for help Wednesday when she realized her rural home near Walters was surrounded by floodwaters.

Local sheriff’s deputies and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol’s lake division sent a rescue boat to save the woman and her dog.

“They couldn’t get the boat to the house. They had to wade in water to get me and the dog,” Taptto said. “They even brought the stew. I worked all morning on that stew.”

After a series of wildlife rescues that included two swans, one hawk, one vulture and even a false alarm with a plastic duck, coming to the aid of a trapped kitten may have seemed back to normal for the Warwick Valley Humane Society.

Chim-chiminey, a tiny gray and white male kitten, was only three weeks old when he recently found himself stuck inside the wall of a chimney in a condo at Warwick Meadows.

After hearing numerous “meows” coming from her fireplace, the condo owner contacted the Warwick Police Department. The police then called Animal Control and when Suzyn Barron, president of the Warwick Valley Humane Society and frequent animal rescuer, arrived, she could hear the kitten screaming but could not see him.

“I asked the police to contact the Fire Department for help,” said Barron, “and sure enough, they came out right away.”

By employing a heat sensor, the firefighters soon found the kitten in the wall next to the fireplace. And, with the owner’s permission, which Barron said was freely given, the firefighters made a hole in the side of the fireplace. As soon as the insulation was removed the kitten reacted faster than anyone expected and leapt to freedom into the waiting hands of Warwick Firefighter, Lt. Steve Acciarito.

“It was a great save,” said Barron. “Chim-chiminey came out screaming and didn’t stop all night.”

She took the kitten in for the night and reports that he eventually calmed down when he realized he was safe and sound.

“We never could have gotten to the kitten without the help of the Fire Department,” said Barron. “They deserve all the credit and we can’t thank them enough for rescuing this little kitten and for coming to our rescue as well.”