Detailed Animal Action Report

Howie (Aaron Eckhart) has a pet dog, which is seen performing such mild action as being petted and walking on a leash. For these scenes, trainers used hand signals and verbal commands to cue the mild action, which the trained dog was accustomed to performing. The background dogs in the film were cued in the same way for their mild action.

In the scene in which Howie’s dog barks at a neighbor through a fence, off-screen trainers cued this action. The food given to the dog was his usual dog food. For the shot in which Howie yanks the dog’s leash hard, causing him to yelp, trainers walked a few feet in front of the dog and used toys, balls and food to get the dog to pull on the leash and act excited. The actor was extremely well-rehearsed in carefully tugging at the leash in an exaggerated motion. The dog’s yelping sound was added in post-production.