Homeward Bound Homeward Bound



Story: Anne Gordon



Animal Actor: Multiple dogs and cats



Four Golden Retrievers and 4 American Bulldogs were used for the parts of Shadow and Chance. We used 8 Himalayan cats to play the part of Sassy. The Company hired to coordinate this film was Jungle Exotics run by Joe Camp and Tammy Maples. Joe was Animal Coordinator and head Golden retriever trainer and Tammy was head cat trainer. I was hired after they fired the assistant cat trainer and I was hired as Tammy's asst. I worked on the film for the last month of filming. The animals were all owned or supplied by Jungle Exotics. They had 7 months of prep time to train the animals for the film. All the cats were trained to run towards a buzzer, which meant food to them. When the cat need to run up to the dogs they had devised a collar for the golden retriever that included a buzzer mechanism that the cat was trained to run towards whenever it heard the buzzer sound. For it's food reward a small piece of liver was clipped to the fur on the chest of the Golden retriever and the cat was trained where to look for his food.