Bob Weatherwax, who trained dogs that played Lassie, as a member of the famous family that also taught Hollywood dogs a thing or two The Thin Man (Asta), The Wizard of Oz (Toto) and Old Screamer (Spike), has died. He was 83.

Weatherwax died Thursday at a Veterans Administration facility in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, said his son, Robert Weatherwax, a former animal trainer for films and television shows. The Hollywood Reporter.

Bob Weatherwax was the son of Rudd Weatherwax, the original owner and trainer of Pal, the collie introduced to moviegoers in the MGM classic Lassie, come home (1943) with Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall.

His grandfather, WS Weatherwax, was an actor and animal trainer in the silent film era, and his cousin, Ken Weatherwax, played Pugsley Addams in The Addams Family.

Bob Weatherwax worked as an animal trainer under his father at the CBS/syndicated Lassie Series that aired from 1954 to 1974 and in the 1978 film The Magic of LassieAfter his father’s death in 1985, he worked on a Lassie film in 1994 and on two other series with the legendary dog.

Weatherwax’s uncles, Jack and Frank, trained Toto for The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Spike for Old Screamer (1957). His father also supervised Asta (real name: Skippy) for the entertaining series of Thin Man Movies and Daisy, the dog in the Blonde Movies.

Born in Burbank on June 4, 1941—exactly one year after Pal was born—Weatherwax spent his life in the entertainment dog training business, helping with dogs at his father’s kennel almost from the day he learned to walk.

As a child, he was often called upon to help with training, even if it was just to stand still while Lassie or another working dog learned a routine. He and his sister JoAnne were the only ones who could honestly say that their pet was the real Lassie. At home, the dog was often assigned the task of being his babysitter.

After a stint in the U.S. Army, Weatherwax returned to California to follow in his father’s footsteps and eventually establish Weatherwax Trained Dogs as his brand.

“Thanks to my father’s genius, we transformed the training of dogs from simple props on a movie set to actors who seemed to behave with human-like emotions,” he wrote.

Weatherwax was also the handler of the dog Einstein in Back to the future (1985) and worked on other films such as Big Jake (1971), Nickelodeon (1976), The thing (1982), The Osterman weekend (1983) and Dennis, the threat (1987).

Weatherwax continued the Lassie legacy until 2002, when, against his wishes, he said, his family voted to sell the Lassie trademark. (MGM owned the rights to Lassie, but when the film series ended, Rudd Weatherwax acquired them.)

He wrote a tribute to his father, With four feet to famepublished in 2017. His last collie was a grandson of the last Lassie trained by Weatherwax.