The private schoolboy was beginning to doubt the wisdom of choosing former standover man Mark "Chopper" Read as his documentary subject for his senior-year assessment.
As he sat on the couch with Read about to film an interview, Chopper's dog, the fearsome-looking Kayser (named after his defence lawyer Boris Kayser), began to take an uncomfortable interest, placing his impressive snout close to the young man's lap.
Master of disguise: Russell Cox's aliases included Mr Walker, aka The Phantom, and his dog was Devil after the comic-book hero's pooch.
"What's the matter?" asked Read. "Haven't you ever sat with someone with no ears with a dog about two inches from your knackers?"
It was a rhetorical question, for while both Read and Kayser looked ferocious their days of crime were behind them.
Russell Cox's capture at Melbourne's Doncaster Shoppingtown in 1988. He liked to get out of the house early, knowing police favoured dawn raids.Credit: Screen grab, SMH News
To show he didn't bear a grudge, Read once named a greyhound "The Buggster" after Tasmania's then Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg, QC, who sent the self-confessed killer to jail on an indefinite sentence.
The greyhound was slow and unsuccessful while the barrister was fast-tracked to become Commonwealth DPP and Chancellor of the University of Tasmania.
When finally released Read moved to a Tasmanian farm with two terriers, Reggie and Ronnie, named after the London Kray brothers. Sadly they had the same bloodthirsty streak as their namesakes and after attacking a prize chicken had to be put down.
Not that Read was a committed animal lover, once admitting to killing an enemy's small dog, barbecuing it with garlic salt and making the rival eat his former pet accompanied only with American mustard.
Contract: Mario Condello was targeted by hitmen because of his regular habit of walking his dog early on the same route, past Brighton Cemetery.Credit: Craig Abraham
Crooks are often referred to as animals (dogs, jackals, hyenas, rats, maggots and stool pigeons), which is wildly unfair to the planet's non-human community. In fact many colourful characters have an affinity for pets – often based on companionship but sometimes for practical purposes.
Prolific drug dealer and killer Dennis Allen kept attack geese at his Richmond house, believing they were more territorial than guard dogs. As he dealt in cash, had more jewellery than Elizabeth Taylor and was a prodigious police informer it was a wise investment – although he was to die in 1987 from a drug-related heart condition.
Snapped: Australia's oldest armed robber Aubrey Broughill holds up a bank in 1978. His corpse's lack of testicles was attributed to the snacking habits of eastern snake-necked turtles.
One of his relatives also had an interest in birds, but of the canary variety, until her favourite went missing during a police raid. She concluded a detective (who himself had a wildlife nickname) freed the feathered pet in an act of petulance. That is until she opened the freezer to find the bird wedged between the fish fingers and the raspberry ripple.
Master armed robber and alleged gangland killer Russell Cox didn't stay on the run for 11 years after escaping from Sydney's maximum-security Katingal jail division by taking risks.
Yabby bait: Lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson had a goldfish named after her by administrative staff of the Purana Gangland Taskforce.Credit: Jason South
He was a master of disguise with a number of aliases, including Mr Walker from The Phantom comics. Even his dog Devil (also from The Phantom) had a fake name, also answering to Butch. He and Devil ran early mornings for Cox liked to be out of the house at sunrise, knowing police preferred to conduct raids at dawn.
Hitman and former poodle breeder James Frederick Bazley had more time for dogs than his victims.
Drifter: Robber Aubrey Broughill's injuries were consistent with the use of a scalpel, not the shredding of turtle claws.
Bazley was paid $20,000 to murder drug couriers Isabel and Douglas Wilson, whose bodies were found buried in Rye in May 1979. The Wilsons were killed on the orders of the Mr Asia drug syndicate boss, Terrence John Clark, after corrupt police confirmed the couple were talking to Queensland detectives.
The hitman was instructed to kill the Wilsons' dog, Taj, and drop their car at Melbourne Airport to leave the impression they had fled overseas. He parked the car as per the plan but refused to kill the dog, dropping it in Brunswick on the way to the airport.
Dog man: Mark "Chopper" had a succession of canines named after both criminals and lawyers.Credit: Jon Reid
Another gangster with a weakness for little dogs was Mario Condello, a qualified lawyer and a tooled-up mobster who once had ambitions to be a High Court judge.
The big man liked to take his dog for an early morning walk, using the same route past the Brighton Cemetery. For a fellow connected with the so-call Carlton Crew and up to his armpits in the Melbourne Underbelly gangland war, such predictability could be fatal.
Drug heavy: Dennis Allen (pointing a gun at his mother, Kath Pettingill) kept attack geese at his Richmond home, believing they were more territorial than guard dogs.
In 2004 the Purana taskforce found drug boss Carl Williams had put out a contract to kill Condello while on his morning walk.
On June 9 police made sure Condello was nowhere near Brighton as the two-man hit team assembled. In a sliding doors moment another large local with a small dog walked past the cemetery, leading the would-be killers to think they had found their man.
Confirmation came with a police bug picking up one saying, "I'm going to have to walk up beside him and shoot him".
As there were 170 police hiding in the area, the gunmen were quickly arrested before they could move. Worried detectives were instantly relieved, as was one of the gunmen's bladders when he was handcuffed.
We will never know if the wrong man discovered how close he was to becoming a mistaken identity victim. Condello was safe – for a time – but continued to be a creature of habit. Given bail on the condition he spent nights at home, he fell into a routine of returning around the same time. He was shot dead two years later walking up his driveway.
The suspect in this case disliked most people and preferred the company of a parrot he taught to cry "not guilty" and "I hate coppers". Who says gunmen don't have a sense of humour?
It is not only the baddies who have affection for animals, as police dogs have a wonderful history of catching crooks and protecting their handlers.
Which is a lesson crooked drug squad senior detective David Miechel forgot when caught outside an East Oakleigh drug house he was in the process of robbing.
Found up a tree by a canine unit he first tried to talk his way out, saying he was looking for the offender. When that failed he punched the handler, which enraged police dog Silky, who proceeded to latch on to the suspect's thigh.
Miechel tried to punch the dog, which enraged the handler who hit him with a police torch, fracturing his cheekbone and jaw. Miechel got a nasty scar and 12 years while Silky got a plate of Meaty Bites.
Miechel's co-offender, Terence Hodson, made a statement implicating then detective sergeant Paul Dale but did not live to testify.
In May 2004, Hodson and his wife Christine were shot dead in their Kew home. Their two guard dogs were locked in the garage, suggesting the victims felt in no danger and were ambushed by someone they knew.
For a time the elite Purana Gangland Taskforce had its own office pet – a mature-age yabby found in a Castlemaine dam and kept in a 25-litre glass receptacle previously used to produce amphetamines.
The container was seized from a lab owned by drug boss Tony Mokbel, and so the freshwater crustacean was named Tony.
Both yabby Tony and runaway Tony seemed to like boats. The drug boss escaped to Greece in a $340,000 ketch while the yabby had a $2 toy one at the bottom of the tank.
Eventually administrative staff bought a goldfish dubbed Zarah (after lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson, who incidentally owned a snake called Chivas) but the yabby ate the fish, proving neither Tony could be trusted nor was fond of captivity.
This brings us to one of the great criminological and zoological mysteries of our time – the unexplained death of Australia's oldest armed robber, Aubrey Maurice Broughill.
When in February 1999 his body was found floating in a flooded Wodonga quarry, the death was treated as suspicious.
There was no reason for him to be there; he had no car; there was no record he arrived on public transport; and accommodation checks showed no bookings under his name. He was 73 years old, fit and a strong swimmer.
When the body was recovered it showed he was wearing a striped shirt, his blue denim jeans were caught around his left foot, his belt was still fastened, he was not wearing underpants and was barefoot.
There was another reason to suggest this was no accident. Aubrey Maurice Broughill had no testicles.
One theory put to the coroner was the local population of eastern snake-necked turtles, which usually snack on insects, small fish, tadpoles and the occasional frog, attacked him after death.
While the 25-centimetre turtle is known to carry on over carrion, no one can explain why it only went after one part of the anatomy. And when these turtles find a carcass, they use their front claws to shred the flesh into bite-size chunks.
Which seems at odds with the description of Broughill's injuries as, "A well-defined incised-like edge measuring seven centimetres and extending to a more irregular ragged tear". This would suggest that unless the turtles were armed with scalpels and doing third-year medicine, they are not guilty.
Broughill had teamed up with some South Australian petty thieves and was charged with 19 offences including burglary and car theft just weeks earlier.
An Adelaide-based taskforce had connected this gang to the mysterious disappearance of four men over a seven-year period. Their bodies have not been found.
And they were all drifters, just like Aubrey.