Training Your Dog For Hollywood

Deutsch: Border Collie (sechs Jahre alt) English: Border Collie (six years old) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you were watching that movie last night, you may have seen a Australian Kelpie or a Landseer or a taliano. Now, what you are asking yourself is - 'Is my Russell Terrier ready to be in the movies?' Ok, your neighbor has said that your family dog is just the best behaved pooch they have ever seen. That dog even has figured out how and when to mug for a picture, a regular scene steeler with a personality that would have given Lassie a good run for her money.

Ok, but she needs one more thing. If you really want your dog to be the next star canine in a real Hollywood television series, your pooch can't just like his picture taken. Your dog is going to have to be well trained and know, not just the basics, but a few great tricks of the trade.

The majority of tricks that you see dogs doing in movies look so great because Hollywood has a way of putting the dog's tricks to good use and making the shots work. They combine them as a series of tricks into a final production that works for a particular scene very well.

It's the basic tricks that are going to land your dog a movie role. There are many training facilities that offer the classes required to get your dog the tricks and obedience that are required by canine actors.

Nearly everything that dogs do on TV are easy tricks. Most of the common tricks the dogs need to do are bow, hide your eyes, wave, turn out the light, crawl, speak on cue, find it, roll over, sneeze, touch the target, back up, play dead and whine.

Learning all of the tricks might be the easy part of getting ready for the movies. The difficult one for lots of dogs is working with strangers all around and a lot of distractions. Also, in many cases, your dog will be under the general control of the set's dog trainer, not you. These are some daunting obstacles for some dogs to overcome.

If your dog can learn all the tricks, but also the Hollywood basics of working with strangers on film sets without losing their cool, you might just have a dog like Shep, the Border Collie that was featured on the Blue Peter television series.

Alright, so your dog is trained and ready to act in the movies. What is your next step? The thing that will make your dog stand out is to make a compelling portfolio for your dog. All the recent photos, his list of tricks, training and hopefully some great videos of your dog doing some of his best tricks.

Many of the training schools for movie dogs will show you how to get your dog into the industry. Don't forget there is a huge amount of commercials and advertising for your aspiring mutt to shoot for also.

Now for the very last detail. Your dog loves you a lot (hopefully, the feeling is mutual). If your dog does not take to this and does not want to be a Hollywood star, your dog will tell you about it. Keep track of your pal and keep things fun for her.