film mania ...

First day of shooting done ....

Not the opening scene in the film which I am glad of - I think Sally will really like the opening shots-waiting to make her that happy is probably smart - the last thing I need is for her to be "agility happy" on her way to filming.


There were three separate shots that called for Sally to work. She had to let a stranger grab her leash and pull her out of the back of a van then slam the door shut. She had to jump into the back of a van full of dogs reacting to her and then she had to sit on the bench in the van and look cute.

All easy enough in many ways. All had little challenges though too.

She had absolutely no issue with the character grabbing her out of the van. She worked beautifully for him. She was happy to jump into the back of the van in rehearsal/blocking with me even with the dogs barking in her face (she barked right back at one point  - exactly what would likely happen in the real world).The space for her was tiny. (She had to fit in front of Sugar - the white dog in the bottom right)

 She did not trust the actor quite enough to give him a big jump up. He also inadvertently put pressure on her by applying leash pressure to try to pull her up into the van to help her. That, she wasn't too happy about. It occurred to me that she was finding the pull quite aversive and reacting to it. Every single time I showed her she did it with grace and poise. I was proud of her for working through what to her must have been a fairly confusing experience. Pulls on her leash have never been part of her work. Van tail gates slamming loudly and dramatically down had not been in her experience either. The final scene we did involved her sitting in the van as it pulled into a parking spot. She was hot and tired but quite content to work through it. She did get too hot at one point so I called for water for her. It was brought quite quickly.


What a lovely group of people to be working with!

What wonderful dogs to be working with.