Detailed Animal Action Report

Throughout the film, the main characters have a dog, who is seen performing such mild action as sitting/standing/lying, being held or petted, and walking/running on or off leash. For all of these scenes, trainers used hand signals and verbal commands to cue the mild action, which the trained dog was accustomed to performing. The barking/growling was also a trained behavior.

Whenever we see the dogs walking in the snow, trainers and the AHA Reps made sure all safety concerns were taken to keep the dogs and the other animal actors nice and warm between takes, which included placing the dogs in heated vehicles, taking them on ample walks and providing them with plenty of food and water. Together, the trainers and our CASR’s were always watching and checking on the dogs to make sure they weren’t negatively affected by the cold weather. The dogs were even provided with dog booties to keep their feet warm!  If there was a snowstorm or the temperature dropped below a certain level, the dogs were prohibited from working.

Whenever we see the dog sitting in the backseat of the car, he was secured. Some of these scenes were filmed on greenscreen, so the car was never actually moving in those scenes. For those scenes where the car was actually driving down the road, the area was closed to traffic and the car moved at a very slow speed.  

In the scene where the dog eats mashed potatoes from the ground, we made sure the food was healthy enough for the dog to handle.