HONOR THE ANIMAL - Lessons from Hollywood Animal Trainers

Chico

This isn’t a book for professional animal trainers; it’s for dog owners who want to give their pet the healthiest, happiest, most fulfilling life ever. But you don’t need to take your dog to a casting call to learn from the current generation of humane professional animal trainers working in Hollywood. A great animal trainer is a problem-solver and someone who understands that the best way to get the behavior you want from a dog is to honor the animal by first concentrating on what makes that particular dog happy.

When it comes to animals in entertainment, there is always a lot of controversy. Even the American Humane Association, which since 1980 has been issuing the now-familiar trademarked end credit “No animals were harmed in the making of this film,” gets its share of criticism. But in the hands of a great trainer, and working under the AHA guidelines, doing movie work can be a brilliant and exciting challenge for the right dog. I always remind people that as much as dogs need patterns and routines in their lives, they also need adventure. Dogs are an incredibly curious species, and if they’re treated right, the kind of daily stimulation that movie work provides can help fulfill them psychologically and lead them to be the best dogs they can be.

Karen Rosa is currently the president of the No Animals Were Harmed® Hollywood division of the American Humane Association and has worked in the Film and Television Unit program for the past eighteen years. “When people say, ‘Oh, it’s such a shame that these dogs are in entertainment,’ I say, ‘But they get to travel. They get incredible psychological enrichment. They get exercise. They get all kinds of affection. They get rewarded for doing it. They have a great deal of fun, quite frankly, much more fun than that poor lonely pet alone in the condo for twelve hours while the owner is at work.’ Plus, we love the fact that so many of the dogs and cats, especially, in film and television are rescued animals.

“Our main tenet is reward and repeat,” says Karen. “Reward the behavior you want, and repeat to encourage it. Any animal on a movie set has to do a lot of repetitions, so this formula is what works best.”

Most people don’t realize that professional animal trainers do what I do: they check out a dog’s energy level—or personality—and make sure it’s a fit before casting the dog in any role. And since the fictional dog in any scripted movie may have to show a more multifaceted personality than any one dog possibly could, sometimes it takes a team of animal actors to flesh out a single character. When I first came to America, I remember how shocked I was when I learned there was more than one Lassie!

“Usually, you have many dogs playing that main character,” Karen explained. “So you might actually have five Lassies. You’ll have herding Lassie, running Lassie, stunt Lassie, glamour Lassie, and then maybe a red carpet Lassie for live appearances—because their temperaments are all very different. So when a trainer reads a script, he’ll think, ‘Hey, I’ve got a dog that can do that. And I’ve got another dog that can do this. And then where do we fill in the gap?’ It’s really quite amazing that they are able to get the performances they do from the live animals and get it humanely. It is brilliant to watch them.”

It’s been a dream of mine since boyhood to watch those Hollywood celebrity animal trainers at work. I believe that these pros with their creative solutions to both building new behaviors and blocking old ones have a whole arsenal of secrets that can help you think of new and ingenious ways to turn your own dog into a happy, obedient pupil.

BE YOUR BEST SELF

On a blustery Saturday afternoon up at my ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley, I invited movie animal trainer Mark Harden to come show me some of the ways he teaches his dogs to perform behaviors on cue. Mark was recommended to me by the American Humane Association as one of its most professional, compassionate, and experienced trainers, and as soon as I met him I could see why they respect him so much. He’s a wiry, agile, upbeat man who clearly loves his animals and who even after thirty years on the job remains wildly passionate about what he does. Like me, he could discuss dogs all day. Mark brought four of his best dogs with him to help illustrate the way he works with different animals. I wanted to talk with him about how he gets animals to do amazing things for movies, but I also wanted to find out how some of his secrets could be used by the average dog owner.

One of the first things that Mark said was advice I also give to my clients. “Be yourself first, but be your best self. If you’re not yourself, the dog will know. I’m a little, quiet guy. I know trainers out there who are really loud and dramatic and expressive. If I tried that, my dogs would laugh at me. If you’re a big, loud guy who does best using your voice and making big, grand gestures, then if you try to be like me, the dog just won’t believe you. Whereas if you go ahead and be yourself and adapt your techniques to who you truly are inside, the dog will learn, ‘Okay, this is who I’m working with,’ and adapt himself to that. But you have to stay consistent. You can’t be one way one day and another way the next. Be who you are, but be consistent.”

I’ve never been on a movie or television set where there hasn’t been a lot of intensity and pressure. There’s always a clock ticking, the meter’s running, and someone’s trying to get somebody else to hurry it up. When I asked Mark about his state of mind when he goes on a set, he told me, “I have to be calm. There’s times when I know it’s going to be stressful and I’m nervous about getting the action that the director wants, but I have to put myself in a place where I can relax and just breathe. I breathe, calm myself, and say, ‘Okay, the dog’s not going to do anything if I’m the one freaking out.’ I have to be calm, centered, and in control of my emotions.”

MARK HARDEN’S TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Bait Bag A bait bag is a simple bag that attaches to my belt and holds the treats I use.

Treats I use treats of all kinds. My current favorite is Natural Balance Rollover. It is a complete and nutritious diet in a convenient log. I can cut it into bite-size pieces and feed it all day without feeling like I’m giving the dog junk food. I am not above using biscuits or hot dogs on occasion. Frequently, I’ll boil liver or cook chicken if I need extra drive. I often have my animals working for their living. I measure out their daily diet and try to work them for it.

Beanbag Marks We call the little beanbag disc we train our dogs to stand on a “mark.” I use the little nylon discs because they are handy. I have them made in my own unique colors so I don’t lose them or confuse them with the marks of other trainers. Our training marks are often replaced on the set with rocks, sticks, leaves, matchbooks, paper plates, or anything that blends into the set.

Apple Boxes An “apple box” is a filmmaking tool we’ve usurped for animal training. I begin their mark training with apple boxes and start teaching them the basic concept of direction. When on set, I use my apple boxes “out of frame” to give my animals a very specific place to either start or end the scene.

Look Stick I use a Lucite rod with a Kong toy on the end of it. The idea is to teach the dog to look at the toy, not the treat. I train this trick because I can rarely be where the dog is supposed to look. When effectively trained, I can stand in one place and direct the dog’s look (or eye line) to another place.

Clicker A clicker is a little plastic box with a metal tongue in it. I use a clicker to communicate with animals less attuned to my vocal inflections and body language, like cats and rats and monkeys. I don’t use a clicker with dogs.

Toy Rewards Some dogs are better rewarded by using a favorite toy. Set work can be monotonous and boring, so it becomes important to vary the reward, and toys work best for many high-energy dogs.

The first dog Mark brought out to show me was a Turkish breed—a magnificent Anatolian shepherd named Oscar. With his perfect cream-colored coat, black highlights around his ears, and mastiff-like muzzle, it was a little embarrassing for me, a short guy, to stand next to Oscar, who practically came up to my shoulders. At 160 pounds, he was a stunningly impressive specimen of dog. The first trick of Oscar’s that Mark showed me was “get up”—this massive animal jumped up and “hugged” me, with his feet on my shoulders. The trick took me by surprise and made me burst out laughing.

“Oscar was a livestock guardian for a herd of miniature horses,” Mark recalled. “And I felt like I’d fallen through the rabbit hole, because his owner had six of these and a dozen miniature horses, and all of the dogs were bigger than the horses. She and her husband were elderly and were downsizing, so they gave me Oscar for the movie Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.”

MARK WORK: THE CONTROLLED STAY

Mark wanted to use Oscar to demonstrate for me how he teaches “mark work”: training a dog to go to a certain mark on the floor and to stay there, either to perform a specific behavior or until he’s released. Because of the intricacies of camera placement, focus, and lighting on a movie set, sometimes a dog has to move from one mark to another mark in a single shot or “take.” The shot will be wrecked if the dog doesn’t hit the exact mark. Now, few dog owners need to micromanage their dog’s movements this way, but Mark’s formula for mark work with movie dogs incorporates some smart suggestions for getting a dog to stay until released.

“Mark work teaches you to be able to control your dog from a distance,” Mark explains. “Our goal is always distance, because we have to be somewhere behind the camera and we can’t always be right on top of the trick. It’s a big challenge for a dog, especially when you’ve been teaching him from close up to that point, baiting him and rewarding him.”

Mark brought out a white quarter–apple box and put it on the ground. Then he guided Oscar to it. Oscar immediately put his two front paws up on the box.

“I start off with something big and obvious, like this box. Later I’ll get specific and ask him to be on a part of the box.” Mark threw down a round beanbag-filled disc, about four inches in diameter, and Oscar immediately moved his paws onto the center of the box where the disc had landed.

“I start by asking him to get on his mark, and I reward him for staying there,” Mark tells me. “Then I ask him to stay on his mark while I move away. I need to be able to stay at a distance and move anywhere while he stays on the box. But there’s also what I call the ‘yin and the yang’ of training. Many people forget that if you teach a dog to stay, you need to give him the command to release him from that stay. If you teach him to lie down, you need to give him the command to get him up on his feet. If you only teach him one-half of the behavior, then he isn’t going to respond to you with consistency.”

Oscar on his apple box mark

CAPTURED TRICKS VS. FORCED TRICKS

A trick is “captured” when a trainer sees a natural behavior that a dog is already doing and rewards it, reinforcing him to do it on cue. A “forced” trick isn’t supposed to involve force—in the hands of a caring trainer, it’s more like a “guided” trick. Mark’s example of teaching Oscar to sit is one of those. He gently guided Oscar’s butt down to the ground and rewarded him just as it hit. Then he partnered the movement with the verbal cue. “I don’t teach ‘sit’ to my pet dogs,” Mark wanted me to understand. “I think it’s something that just grows out of our relationship—the way we move, the way we live. With a working dog, it’s a little bit different, so I’ve got to get it on cue, got to get it from a distance.”

THE YIN AND YANG OF THE SIT

“Then there’s the yin and yang of the sit,” says Mark. “So I say, ‘On your feet.’ To do that, I gently put my toe between his legs, and it prompts him to stand up. So I’m controlling both things—when he sits and when he gets up from the sit. I want to teach the cue, and then the opposite. ‘On your feet, stay,’ at the same time. So this way I teach both behaviors together.”

Mark told me that after a couple days of working with a dog on a big mark like a box, he starts working the mark down in size, until he gets it to something as small as a dime. On movie sets the mark often has to be as small as a rock, or at least small enough that the camera won’t see it. In operant conditioning terms, this process is known as “shaping”: “The next step is for me not to lead him to the mark, but to teach him to go find it. And I’ll reward him for that. So he starts thinking about looking for where that mark will be. I want to teach a dog to think.”

Mark starts by using constant positive reinforcement—in this case, paying with treats. “But you have to wean them off that constant reinforcement, because on the set you can’t always control when he gets paid. So he has to move to mixed-variable reinforcement, which means, once I know that he knows to hit the mark, I hold off on the pay. I’ll just say, ‘Good’—that’s reinforcing, right? And then maybe I’ll use food to pay for the second trick, also bridging it with my ‘Good.’ And I have a lot of different ‘Goods’ in my tone of voice. I have ‘Good’ like ‘Okay, you got it, but barely,’ and ‘Good!’ like ‘Amazing, what a great job!’ I use my body, I use everything I’ve got, to communicate. Dogs are amazingly intuitive.”

PAY FOR WHAT YOU WANT, NOT FOR WHAT YOU DON’T WANT

It’s from the mark point that an advanced trainer like Harden teaches his animals to respond to his signals and to perform what are called “micro commands.” Those are the behaviors that you’ll see an animal express on camera. I watched in amazement as, from a distance, Mark directed Oscar to turn around on his mark like the hands of a clock by saying, “Get around, Oscar.” “I used to train elephants when I was younger,” Harden explains. “So when I started working with larger dogs and I couldn’t physically move them myself, I thought it made sense to just teach them commands the same way I would teach an elephant.” As Oscar turned, Mark would sometimes tell him to “look away”—an important command in movies, since animals sometimes have to appear to be looking at something happening on the other side of the screen. Watching Oscar perform his 360-degree turns on command was truly a jaw-dropping moment. For me, it was a lot more interesting than watching a whole movie!

As he worked with Oscar, Mark showed me that what you reward is just as important as when you reward. “I say, be very specific with the trick, and never pay for what you don’t want.” He illustrated a common mistake: after asking Oscar to go to his mark, he backed up and, as Oscar reflexively followed him, shouted, “No, no, no,” until Oscar hit his mark again; then he said, “Good boy,” and paid Oscar with a treat.

“What did I just teach you? You missed your mark, you cheated forward on your mark, you backed up, and then I rewarded you. What I taught you was to take three steps forward and then one step back to get my reward and approval. That’s a common mistake people make. So I say, be specific with the trick, pay for the trick, and not the other stuff. So I’ll go back and do it over. I’ll do it over one hundred times. Eventually he’ll learn exactly what it is that gets him paid.”

BREAKING THE TRICK

If you shout “Good boy!” after your dog does something and your dog can learn to work through it, fine. But beware of breaking the trick. If you want your dog to sit and then stay, yelling “Good boy!” after his butt touches the ground rewards him before he’s finished. You’ve broken the trick.

“With me,” Mark says, “whenever my voice gets excited, it’s a cue to my animals that we’re done for the day, work time is over, and playtime is about to begin. That’s why I remain calm, with less overt emotion, during work hours.” Dogs recognize the difference between working and not working—that’s how guide dogs, assistance dogs, and security dogs do it. That’s why there’s usually a sign on their vests saying, DON’T PET OR PLAY WITH THIS DOG—HE’S WORKING. Save your unbridled enthusiasm for pure playtime; don’t blow it all when you’re trying to teach. Too much enthusiasm can create too much excitement, with the result that you lose the lesson.

Mark stresses that the hard work is rooted in teaching the basics, or the building blocks of the tricks. “I start it all by teaching him to go to his mark, and stay there, and learn that there’s a point to all this—that I’m not just a crazy person asking him to do random things. Once he gets that, then the tricks come really fast. The dog has to learn to learn. So start with cause-and-effect tricks—tricks where they do something that makes something happen. ‘Give me your paw’ is a good one. You start with the seed of a behavior and then shape it into the trick you want it to be, such as first the sit, then the sit-stay, then the sit-stay with distance, then the sit-stay when I can get behind you.”

That’s an important lesson for all pet owners who teach their dogs commands. Start with the basics and make sure those lessons are ingrained. Once you do that, you’ve got a solid foundation for any future training you want to do.

BAD DOGS ARE “WINNERS”

Mark’s next dog, Finn, had the appealing scruffy face and compact body of your classic lovable terrier mutt. “Look at him,” Mark said. “This guy fell right out of a Disney movie. He may have been on death row, but the way he looks—if I can’t get this dog a job, forget about it.” Finn was a last-chance dog who had been returned to the animal shelter in Agoura, California, three times.

I asked Mark what he looks for in a shelter dog such as Finn, whom many previous owners may have not been able to handle. “I look for the dogs in the shelter that I call the winners. The people in the shelter might not think of them as that. They think of them as losers and feel sorry for them. But to me, this is a dog that has succeeded in everything he’s tried to do. He’s succeeded in escaping from the yard. He’s succeeded in tearing up the living room. He sees himself as a winner. He’s in this strange environment, the shelter, and he’s still happy. I see him as a dog with a great giving personality who’s going to try and try and try until he wins. My job is to challenge him with new things to succeed at and then to pay him for what I want.”

When Mark first brought Finn home, Finn, who was a biter, went right for Mark’s face. “Within three months I had him on the set, perfectly happy and working. Kids were picking him up. I just had to let him know what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Biting any part of my body, that’s not cool. He’s a terrier with a ton of energy, and the point is to put that energy to work for him instead of against him.”

I noticed that when Mark first brought Finn out, the brown-and-white terrier mix was excited and jumpy, until Mark changed his demeanor from a casual one to a working one. I was amazed at how quickly Finn picked up on Mark’s cue that, “Okay, now we are getting serious here.” The split-second interval that it took for Mark to switch his energy cues from playful to serious was impressive. I wanted Mark to break down for me what exactly he was doing there.

“I practically grew up with wild animals,” Mark said, “and one of the things that I learned was, humans are the only animals that play as an end in itself. Most animals use play as a means to an end. I use play that way. I play with them, and then I stop. I understand a little mouthiness in dogs. That’s who they are, that is how they communicate. But I would be foolish not to let them know when they are getting to be a little much. So I control it, I start it, I stop it. It allows me to have some dominance without forcing anything on them.”

When Mark used the word dominance, I stopped him immediately—that’s a word that has constantly gotten me into trouble. I wanted him to explain exactly what he meant by it.

“The best dominance is invisible; it’s an aura, and the better a leader that you are, the less it is seen,” Mark told me. “I’ve been with wild animals virtually all my life, and this is just a part of all social behavior. In the wolf packs I worked with, the real pack leaders weren’t ones who had to do very much at all. They could control everyone with a look or a body posture. It goes to show that the real leaders are the coolest guys in the group.”

The word control is another hot-button word for some people. I believe we should always have control over our dogs, but it should be a voluntary kind of control in which the pack followers happily and willingly want to please the pack leader. Mark sees it slightly differently. “Well, yes, I do want control of the dog on the set. But what I really want is the animal’s attention,” he said. “I need him to be paying attention to me and looking to me for the cues as to what he should be doing. But it’s a partnership. We’re working together on this. I have to earn any control I have.”

Sometimes the animals Mark can’t control are the other people who work on the busy and chaotic movie sets. He offers some great advice for pet owners who are uncertain about how their dog might react around strange people or animals. “Create a bubble of safety around your dog, especially a learning dog. Make sure the dog is calm and on the leash, and that you are prepared for how he might react. It’s up to you, the owner, to keep your dog safe.”

THE MOVIE RECALL

“I would never let a new dog off a leash until I have a relationship and a consistent recall,” Mark told me. “I learned that the hard way. Someone gave me a rescued briard, and I brought him home and turned him loose in my backyard and said, ‘Oh, look at the pretty dog.’ And then suddenly it was like I had a coyote in my backyard—I couldn’t get near this guy for five days. My kids were terrorized. I asked myself, ‘Why would I do this?’ This is a totally strange environment, and I’ve known this dog for all of five minutes. I realized, ‘Liberty is earned. This dog has no point of reference for how to behave in my environment.’ ”

I agree with Mark on this point. Often the first thing people do when they bring a rescued dog home is to set the dog loose in their home. They mean well and are thinking something like, “I want you to know that it’s all right, that I love you, and that this is your home now, and that you are free.” But these owners are overlooking the fact that the dog has been given no instructions as to how to behave in this new environment. The dog is looking to pick up cues from the owner, but the owner is not giving any. So naturally, the dog is going to improvise—and usually his solution is not going to be one that accounts for your grandmother’s wing chair being an heirloom and your carpet having just been shampooed.

“In movie work, a recall is a ‘treat’ thing. The dogs come for food. With my pet dogs, it’s just manners. They come because I call them and we have a relationship and I’ve trained them to come when they’re called. But for a movie dog, I have to know that he will run, across a street, through a field, out a window—every time I call, he’s got to reliably come to me.”

The movie recall is actually a great exercise that any family can practice at home as a fun game, something to strengthen their dog’s desire to respond when his name is called. It is usually done with two trainers as a release and a call. “It’s called an ‘A to B,’ ” says Mark.

We started the exercise with me holding Finn off-leash, as the “A,” and Mark running all the way across the field. Then he called, “Finn, come!” and Finn took off like a shot toward him. Finn ran from “A” to “B” and got a treat. Of course, Finn already knew Mark. To train him to come back to me, a perfect stranger, Mark brought Finn closer to me, gave me some bait, and then let me call him at close quarters. When Finn reached me, I rewarded him for it. We repeated that exercise again and again, with each of us moving farther apart each time. “We’ll do that all day, going back and forth, back and forth,” Mark explained. By the end of the exercise, Finn was coming to me when I called him from all the way across the field.

“The next step in creating a consistent recall would be, one of us might go around a blind corner and call him, so we’d be out of sight and he’d be coming to our voice. When we have that down, we might run around your ranch here and hide and do the ‘A’ to ‘B’ from various hiding places at the ranch, to get him to come look for me. I’d start by paying him all the time, and then break it off. I only do that once I feel they’ve got the trick. This guy—Finn—he doesn’t need treats because he just loves to run. I’ve got to admit that sometimes the treat payoff is really for me, not the dog—because it makes me feel good to give them something.”

THE HARD-TO-REACH DOG

Right after Mark finished telling me about how important it is to create “professional relationships” with the animals he works with, he admitted to me that he had a secret. “This is my favorite dog,” he said coyly, as he slipped a martingale collar around the neck of one of the most magnificent Akitas I’ve ever seen in my life. “I use the martingale with him because I don’t have to make the loop with it every time. I can just go up to Chico on the set, put the collar on, move him, slip it on, slip it off.

“I got this dog when he was two, worked with him for six months, then worked with him on the movie Hachiko: A Dog’s Tale. Since then, I’ve had him for almost three years. He was initially a failed show dog because he was so shy. Why was he shy? Again, I don’t really care. It could have been birth order for all I know. People say, ‘Oh, that dog must’ve been abused,’ but he came from an excellent breeder, and I think birth order can play as much role in a dog’s personality as anything else. Where was he in that original pack? Was he the last one out, the one who got kicked away from the teat all the time? Was he stepped all over by the other puppies? I don’t know, but even if I did, that really doesn’t help me. I have to help him work through those issues in the present, not the past.”

Mark is a man after my own heart in this philosophy. When I rehabilitate a dog, the owners often want to tell me the long, long story of the terrible life the dog lived before they stepped in and saved him. Well, that may be the truth, or it may be their imagination. But because it’s in the past, it’s history. And history is, by definition, just another story. I have to work in the now, which is the reality. I want to look at the dog before me as he is today and figure out: Who is he at this moment, and what does he need from me to be able to help him?

The story of how Mark broke through to this incredible Akita and not only trained him but created a lasting bond with him is incredibly beautiful. It choked me up a little bit. It brings home one of the lessons I hope you are getting from this book—that in order to teach a dog to be obedient to your wishes, you’ve got to reciprocate by sharing something that also matters to him. Mark told me, “I love Chico so much probably because I really had to work for it.

“When I got him,” Mark recalls, “the breeder said, ‘He really likes you,’ because I took him out and he came right to me. ‘He never does that,’ the breeder says. And Chico went to me, and I walked him. I brought him home. He came out of the crate to me—it’s very important to me to be the first one to open the crate door. And he came right out. Everything was good.”

But then Mark tried feeding Chico. Not only did the dog refuse to take food from Mark’s hand, but he even refused to eat in his presence! “It was almost like a humiliation. It just was verboten. ‘No, I’m an Akita. I don’t eat out of your hand.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, you got to eat.’ And I couldn’t find anything that gave this dog pleasure or joy, and I’m going, ‘Well, this isn’t going to work. Not if you don’t enjoy this.’ But I had no choice because we’re doing an Akita movie, and he’s the lead dog, and this is our livelihood. I mean, if I can get a leopard to hit a mark, I can get this dog to hit a mark. I just have to figure out how to communicate with him.”

Mark’s relationship with Chico finally turned a corner when he started doing agility work with him. “Pretty soon he was doing the full agility course, no treats, no rewards. Wouldn’t look at me at first, but he got it. There was a purpose to my training. ‘Oh, he wants me to go from here to there. And then from here to there. Now I get it.’ It made sense to him. Mostly, he enjoyed it. And then after that, a couple of other things started making sense to him, and then pretty soon he was gobbling food out of my hand. He got his whole diet out of my hand.”

After a month of not getting any response from Chico, Mark finally found his “in” through the agility work they did together. In six months, Chico was doing the lead role in a movie with Richard Gere, performing on cue in front of huge film crews, lights, and machinery. Akitas are traditionally very difficult to train. Many of the more ancient breeds seem to be more aloof and less inclined to want to please humans than retrievers, herding dogs, or terriers, for example. “The Akita breeders were shocked that I got so much work out of this dog and so much reliable repetition. After the movie, I took him home as a pet, which I’d never done before.”

It’s important to note why Mark was so successful. He wasn’t just thinking about what the dog could do for him. He was thinking, “How can I find something that really turns this dog on?” Making the experience fun and challenging for the dog was the most important element in their relationship. “I wanted him to get joy out of the work. Otherwise, I would have none,” Mark says.

DIFFERENT DOGS, DIFFERENT ABILITIES

The last dog that Mark brought out to show me was absolutely gorgeous—a brown-and-white English shepherd named Dusty. Dusty was half of a duo—Dusty and Duffy, two lookalike English shepherds who together make up the character of Sam the shape-shifter dog in the HBO vampire series True Blood. One of Dusty’s special tricks was lifting his leg on command.

I watched as Mark called Dusty to his mark, then commanded, “Lift!” The leg went right up, and Mark gently whispered, “Hike, hike,” as the dog continued to hold it for a good ten seconds. Mark released Dusty by saying, “All right!” and giving the dog a treat from his pouch.

“This is a kind of ‘forced trick,’ the same idea as ‘give me your paw,’ except it’s ‘give me your back paw,’ ” he explained. Mark’s assistant, Tracy Kelly, brought a white half–apple box to help Mark show me how the trick had been shaped. He used a pointer to guide Dusty’s leg up onto the box, then rewarded him. “You start by rewarding him for just a touch. So he gets the idea. You start with a small box and then lift it higher and higher.”

Of course, an English shepherd has the agility and physical body type to be able to do this. Another dog might have a harder time. That’s why Hollywood animal trainers often use multiple dogs to play one role.

“Different dogs have different abilities and different personalities,” said Mark. “For instance, Dusty did the leg lift faster, he caught on to it better, than Duffy, so usually, if we need a leg lift, I’ll use him in the scene. He’s also more people-oriented than Duffy, so if there’s a scene where he has to run into a group of people and get hugged, we would go to him. Duffy is a little more trick-oriented, a little more precise, so if it’s something real specific, we’ll go to Duffy. Duffy also has a more serious look to his face. This guy”—he gestured to Dusty, mussing up his fur—“kind of has a more open and youthful look. Duffy’s a little more serious, a little sleeker, so if it’s a scene involving aggression or something where he has to be ominous, he looks a little better, so we just balance it out. One time they got to work with each other because they play Sam, the character’s dog, but they also play the dog that Sam shape-shifts into. So in one scene Sam shape-shifts into a dog, and he and his own dog go swimming together. That was a fun one.”

When we shook hands at the end of the day and Mark and Tracy piled his dogs into his truck for the drive back to his ranch in northern Los Angeles County, I felt like I’d been talking to a kindred spirit. While Mark’s work involves getting animals to do behaviors solely for human benefit, he clearly approaches his job from the dog’s perspective and looks for ways to make movie work fun and rewarding for the dog. This is a man who begins every task by reminding himself to honor the animal first. In my opinion, that’s why he has been getting such great results and having fun at his job for over thirty years.

MARK HARDEN’S HOLLYWOOD TRAINING RULES

1. Be clear and simple in what you want from the dog. Start with small, basic tricks and don’t move on until you are certain that the first behaviors have been consistently mastered.

2. Every dog is different, and different dogs are motivated by vastly different things. Have a lot of options in your tool kit, and don’t give up until you find that special reward or activity that allows you and your dog to communicate with each other. And make sure the experience is fun!

3. My “yin and yang” rule: when you teach any behavior, also teach the opposite of that behavior—for instance, “sit” goes with “get on your feet!”

4. Use mixed-variable reinforcement—once the dog has the basics of the behavior you are trying to teach, don’t reward it every time and alternate rewards, from food to praise to toys. Eventually, having successfully completed the behavior becomes a reward in itself.

5. Be specific. Pay for what you want, not for what you don’t want. If the dog gets only part of the behavior right, don’t reward. Otherwise, you are teaching him to get only part of the behavior right! Let him figure out what it is he needs to do to get paid—that’s part of the challenge.

6. Be yourself when training—your best self—and be consistent.

Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier.