Detailed Animal Action Report

Throughout the film, the main character has a pet 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.

In the scene where the actress rides a tricycle with her puppy following her, the dog’s trainers prepped the puppy several times before shooting the scene. They also had the actress feed the dog treats just before shooting the scene. The trainer placed the dog in front of the girl. Then when the girl started riding her bike the puppy followed her down the sidewalk at a good distance.

In the scene where the girl crawls under the house and finds her dog, disemboweled with rats in his stomach, trainers placed several rats in a fake dead dog’s stomach. They placed cheese in the area of the fake stomach to keep them in place. Production provided us with the correct documentation for the fake dead dog.