Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
RECKON your pooch is the new Al Pacino? Could your hound be the next Halle Berry? With Hollywood dogs commanding around £300 a day, propelling your pet in front of a movie camera might sound like a sweet meal ticket. But as top Hollywood dog trainer Sarah Clifford explains, it takes more than a wagging tail and a cute furry face to make it in the movies.
‘Pretty much every dog owner thinks their dog is the next Meryl Streep,’ says Clifford. ‘People show me endless photos of their dogs on their phones but it takes a special animal.’
Confidence and people skills are essential but the first thing Clifford sniffs out is attitude.
‘You want a dog that’s high energy – sometimes those dogs that are too high energy for a normal pet at home,’ she says. ‘But you want that enthusiasm on set because they will have to do a lot of takes.’
With more than 150 screen credits to her name including Think Like A Dog, a new family film about a telepathic Labradoodle co-starring former Transformers actors Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox, Clifford is one of Hollywood’s most in-demand animal trainers.
‘I don’t describe myself as a “dog trainer” because I have worked with all kinds of species,’ she says. In fact, she’s worked with mice, bunnies, cats, birds, llamas, iguanas (including the one in Marriage Story) and even trained cockroaches.
‘I use the term “wrangler” when it comes to insects,’ she says. ‘There are no verbal cues such as “Stay.” With insects, the warmer they are, the faster they go. If you want them to stop, you draw a little line of Vaseline. They really don’t like Vaseline.’
Discreet about her private clients, Clifford reveals she recently babysat actress Brie Larson’s dogs as a favour – but being a celeb’s pet nanny was never her dream.
‘I was always one of those little girls who had every pet imaginable,’ she says. ‘I wanted to know how they communicated.’
Sarah Clifford. with Uggie from. The Artist.
It was only when working on The Matrix 2 that she discovered movie-training animals was a real job. She interned at an agency for a year, ‘picking up a lot of poop’, before landing her first animal gig on Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Since then, Clifford has trained some of the biggest canine names in the business, including Uggie, the Parson Russell Terrier who won the coveted Palme D’Og for his star turn in The Artist. ‘Uggie was unique,’