The Secret Life of Movie Dogs: An Interview with Trainer Mathilde De Cagny - Pt 2
Mathilde de Cagny: Why Hollywood's Top Dog Trainer Only Uses Rescue Dogs
Welcome back for part 2 of our interview with dog trainer Mathilde de Cagny, who focuses on her philosophy and methods for training animals, primarily dogs, for film and television.
🐾 Training Philosophy & Sourcing Dogs
Preference for Rescue Dogs: Mathilde strongly prefers getting dogs from shelters or rescues rather than using privately owned dogs.
Reasoning: Her main motivation is to make a difference for dogs that need a home and training, calling the process of rescuing and training them a fulfilling "journey."
Private Dogs Complications: She avoids private dogs because they are already well taken care of, and returning them is difficult for the bond formed. She also notes that "sharing a dog" with its owner is challenging due to conflicting visions and the need for the owner to be "completely out of the equation" for the dog to form a strong working bond with the trainer.
Adoption/Fostering: She uses a system where her own trained dogs, like the Molly team, are fostered out to people. If a project comes up, the dogs return to her for the duration of the show.
🎬 Movie Prep and Training Methods
Anticipation and Flexibility: When prepping for a movie, she studies the script and the director closely to anticipate changes and train the dogs accordingly.
"Cooking" Analogy: Once dogs have enough basic behaviors and control, she calls the training process "cooking"—mixing and matching skills to create a new, desired behavior, often offering an "alternative" to what the production initially requested.
Overcoming Challenges: She often receives scripts where the request is seemingly impossible for a dog, thinking, "whoever wrote it obviously doesn't know anything about dogs." She then finds a creative way to achieve the goal, sometimes with the help of CGI and special effects (technology she didn't have early in her career).
🐕 Baseline Behaviors (Must-Haves)
Mathilde has a set of behaviors she never shows up without:
Recall: Her number one priority.
Stays
Sit Distance
"Go On": A command to move away from the trainer and towards a person or object (actor, box, couch). This is essential so the dogs don't constantly look to the trainer, but instead learn to interact with actors.
Retrieve: A "must" because it can be adapted to many actions, like holding something or grabbing pants.
Working for Someone Else: Training the dog to perform tasks away from her and for other people.
Personalities and Favorites
Brainstorming: New ideas often come from the dogs themselves, who "feed" her by offering behaviors based on their unique personality. She recommends trainers "take, and make the most of it" when a dog offers a behavior.
Favorite Dog: Her favorite was Enzo, the son of the famous Moose (Frasier's Eddie).
Enzo: Described as amazingly reliable and able to wear "so many hats" perfectly. He was a pleasure to work with, doing everything from showing aggression to kissing a child's face. She rarely needed a second dog for him.
Moose (The Father): Was willing, but on "his own terms." Described as extremely independent, strong-willed, complex, and selfish, making him unreliable.
🐶 Gender and Age Preferences
Gender: She prefers males because they tend to be bigger and more independent. She finds females are often more dependent on the trainer, which she dislikes for movie work where dogs need to relate to actors.
Note for Pet Owners: She suggests that people looking for a pet should get a female, as they are generally easier to handle and more loyal.
Ideal Starting Age: She prefers to start training rescue dogs around one year old, as she can quickly assess their personality and potential within two weeks.
Flexibility: She has successfully trained an older dog, Friday (a Jack Russell for Hotel for Dogs), who was six years old when he started.
The Second Movie: A dog is considered truly "finished" and great for features by their second movie (like Enzo and Cosmo/Friday), as they are fully accustomed to the setup, people, noises, and the trainer's style.
🤏 Working with Small Dogs
Chihuahuas: She recently worked on Beverly Hills Chihuahua. While she prefers big dogs, she learned to work with Chihuahuas like cats, not dogs.
Training Small Dogs:
They have less drive (toy or food) and need to want to do it on their own terms.
They are very stubborn and mentally "shut down" when pushed. Her advice is to let them rest, change their minds, and not try to be the boss of them.
Repetition (a staple of training) doesn't work well with them.
Lessons Learned (from Moose): Her difficult experience with Moose (Frasier's Eddie), where she learned she couldn't be a "dictator," helped her understand how to work with small, complex dogs. She realized the secret is knowing when to start and when to finish a session, prioritizing feeling over following a strict book.
Current Projects
She recently worked on Valentine's Day (dogs and bird stuff) and Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2.