THE most your average dog can look forward to is a bit of stick chasing and the occasional walk.

But while it's a dog's life for a run-of-the-mill canine, six mutts from Bishop's Waltham have left all that behind to become A-list celebrities of the animal world.

They live like pampered pooches and regularly rub fur with some of the world's best-known actors as their accurate portrayal of police and search dogs is highly sought after.

Owners Camilla, known as Milly, 40, and Peter Whitear, 56, run Cop and Dog Services, which supplies highly trained animals to TV and film sets.

Their main work comes from The Bill but the dogs' CVs would be the envy of any two-legged thespian with appearances that include Casualty, Midsomer Murders, Jonathan Creek, Silent Witness and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, to name but a few.

Now they have landed their biggest ever role in a forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster with two of the world's biggest stars, Penelope Cruz and Hugh Grant.

The couple's story is one of phenomenal success starting from when Richard quit Hampshire Constabulary as a dog handler to take up TV work with his ex-police dog Freddie.

Now they use dogs that have been trained to police standard but for some reason have not quite made the grade.

Peter said: "They are all trained as police dogs and we try to portray them as realistically as possible.

"When it happens they think it's all real and they are back to work. They don't know what a camera is and that's how we get the authenticity.

But it's not all glitz and glamour. A working day often starts at 4am in order to get on set in time and they can be kept hanging around on set for hours to do their piece.

Back at home the dogs get to relax in style with individual luxury kennels that have lighting, bedding and are temperature controlled with an automatic thermostat.

Milly and Peter also have, parked on their drive, a police Land Rover and police van for shoots. The number plates are S999 DOG and Y999 DOG respectively.

Peter said: "Our neighbours feel pretty safe with us here. And we do the police a great favour on the motorways when we drive the vehicles. Other drivers slow right down when they see us!"