By Garry Maddox
There’s the Blue Heeler family loved around the world in Bluey. There’s the fluffy stray who brings two strangers together in Colin From Accounts. And there was the charismatic kelpie from the Red Dog trilogy and the Maremma who protected a penguin colony in family film Oddball.
Mad Max had a cattle dog named Dog. Babe was taken in by border collies Fly and Rex. And a beer-drinking, dope-smoking, foul-mouthed mongrel was so popular that the SBS cult hit Wilfred was remade for American TV.
A scrappy, resolute, determined, inventive little dog: Lily LaTorre as Annie with Squid as Runt.Credit: Court McAllister
Hollywood has long loved telling stories featuring dogs - making Lassie, Toto, Beethoven, Marley and many others famous - and now canines have been turning up a lot as major characters on Australian screens.
Author Craig Silvey, who has written a new film based on his bestselling children’s novel Runt, thinks he knows why.
“Dogs have the habit of demonstrating how good a human should be,” he says. “There’s something about having dogs in our lives that maybe leaves us a little more emotionally vulnerable. They’re very present, they’re very spontaneous.”
In director John Sheedy’s family comedy, Runt is a scruffy stray terrier who bonds with 11-year-old Annie Shearer, played by Lily LaTorre, and proves surprisingly successful at winning dog agility competitions. That gives the Shearer family the chance of earning enough at the lucrative Krumpets Dog Show in London to save their drought-stricken family farm in Upson Downs.
But the stubborn dog refuses to race unless Annie is the only one watching.
“Runt is a scrappy, resolute, determined, inventive little dog who has to scavenge to survive and who has nobody to care for him,” Silvey says. “Annie offers him his first moment of generosity and kindness and that bonds them for life.”
Casting the top dog in a film that also stars Jai Courtney, Jack Thompson, Deborah Mailman, Matt Day and Celeste Barber was a challenge.
“Dogs have the habit of demonstrating how good a human should be”: author Craig Silvey.Credit: James Brickwood
“We made it a point of focus for our casting department to rescue and adopt a dog and rehome them,” Silvey says. “We thought it was a really important example to set.
“It took a long time to scour the nation. Our amazing animal department looked everywhere and found Squid in regional Victoria.”
Animal trainer Rebecca Faulkner says they started the search in dog rescue groups.
“We knew from the book that the dog had to be a particular size to work with a young child,” she says. “And had to be, as Craig wrote in the book, this indiscriminate, one-of-a-kind terrier.
“And it was hard because the dogs that are in rescue are often bully breeds or oodles so you don’t see them very often.”
Squid as Runt with Lily LaTorre as Annie in the film. Credit: Court McAllister
Opening her emails one morning, Faulkner saw Squid’s face with the message “this dog is ready for adoption” from a foster home in Geelong.
“I was like ‘there she is. I hope she’s confident, I hope she’s food-motivated’,” she says. “I arranged to meet her right away and as soon as I saw her, I thought, ‘yep, that’s the one’.”
Faulkner quickly realised why Squid, who was about a year old at the time, was onto her fourth home.
“She’s a terrier through and through,” she says. “She’s busy, she’s smart, she picks things up very quickly. She’s got long legs and she can jump a fence like it’s not even there.
“So Squid needed a home that was busy, could occupy her mind and also give her the ability to relax. She needed to be able to calm herself.”
Faulkner says Squid proved very trainable at racing agility courses, taking direction and just being comfortable on a busy film set.
“I’m sure that dog is smarter than me,” she says. “Lily and Squid worked incredibly hard on this film. They were on set almost every day, all day. They’re 10-hour days.”
Faulkner, who has also trained dogs with business partner Peta Clarke for the TV series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and the horror film Sting, thinks they are so common on screen because they live in so many Australian homes.
“If I’m watching a film or a TV show and the family doesn’t have a dog or a cat, I think it can be missing something,” she says. “Animals can bring such a strong emotion to a film. A dog can really bring an emotional poignancy to a scene if it’s done well.”
After finishing the film, Squid is now part of Faulkner’s family in Daylesford in rural Victoria - joining two other dogs, three cats and some chickens.
“She’s a real-life rags-to-riches story,” she says. “She waltzed in, jumped up on the sofa next to my beautiful old dog Teddy and she was just oozing ‘I live here now’. She just brought the whole family together.”
Dogs on Australian screens
Bluey
The ABC animated series about an energetic Blue Heeler who lives with father Bandit, mother Chilli and sister Bingo has won fans around the world.
Bluey has become a global hit.Credit: ABC
Red Dog
A kelpie named Koko played the title character in the 2011 film that inspired the sequels Red Dog: True Blue and Koko: A Red Dog Story.
Colin From Accounts
Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer named their hit comedy after a dog played by Zac and Buster who they have called “the most professional actors on our set”.
Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall with their canine co-star in Colin from Accounts.Credit: Lisa Tomasetti
Oddball
Shane Jacobson and Sarah Snook were joined by a Maremma sheepdog named Kai, who played the real penguin-protecting Oddball in this 2015 film.
Napoleon
For this 1995 family film, 52 puppies were reputedly required to play the title character, a golden retriever who goes on a balloon-powered adventure.
Molly
A very young Claudia Karvan starred alongside singing dog Molly, playing herself, in this 1983 family film.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.