Hachiko - A Dog's Tale With A Twist

Here's a very interesting interview from Don Cross's Akita breeders helping owners blog at http://akitasites.net/phpblog/index.php.

Don interviewed Kathy Coffman of Baycrest Akitas to get some really neat, behind-the-scenes insights. Kathy is one of the co-breeders of Forrest, who is one of the handsome Akitas in the new Hachiko movie starring Richard Gere.
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Don: With the fast coming opening of the movie Hachiko. I wanted to give the visitors to Akita sites a little more dog side view of the making of the film than the trailers and movie reviews. I contacted Kathy and Ed Coffman of Baycrest Akitas, who are Co-breeders along with Cornelius Campbell, Monumental Akitas, of "Forrest" - registered name Baycrest Run Forrest Run, who is owned by Joseph Capaldi.

Were you ever on set during filming? 

No we were supposed to be invited but never really got the chance to go.
  

How did Forest put up with the repetition of retakes?

We cautioned the trainers in advance of sending the dog that "they" (the dogs) were going to learn quickly but the trainers most likely were not going to get the dogs motivated enought to do repetitive actions. The cautions that Deb and I issued to the trainers were almost identical (even though neither of us really knew this until much later).

After the dogs were trained we were told by the trainers that these dogs were indeed very different from the other dogs they had trained and their training methods were altered and akin to the training they used when they trained the wolves for a previous picture.

I think it was very fortunate that each of these three dogs had very different temperaments. It is my understanding that Layla was the outgoing active willing girl who worked for her tennis ball. Clapton/now Chico was just a big goofy boy (you'd probably get more precise information from Deb Anibal on their differing temperaments). Forrest, on the other hand, is a real "ho hum" dog; he is lazy, slow and unaffected by most things. If I were to make an educated guess I would say Forrest was probably the most challenging dog of the three.

ALL of these dogs were trained by hand signals that differ greatly from the more common ones we know from the obedience and performance rings. Just as an example - to get Forrest to rise from a sitting or lying position you need to kick your right leg out crossing over your left leg - and he will instantly stand (IF you can get him to look at you). LOL

We were told we would be provided with a CD of all the hand signals and tricks they had learned - and we were told we might be able to replicate some of the tricks but not all of them - we never got this CD despite many requests for it. :o(


How much travel was involved? How many months did the filming take?

We sent Forrest to California to Boones Animals of Hollywood in June 07 and were told we "should" have him back by Xmas 07 at the latest but hopefully by Thanksgiving 07. That didn't happen - the picture took far longer to make then was orginally anticipated and weather did not co-operate. It snowed when it wasn't supposed to and didn't snow when they thought it would. Requiring them to catch almost all four seasons to make the picture appear to cover the many years of lifespan of Hachiko. We finally got Forrest back in Sept/Oct of 08.

The dogs spent several months in California living with the trainers then went on location to Providence - they returned to California with the trainers and then returned to Providence in the spring/summer to finish filming. Forrest was returned to us from Providence just a couple days after the final scenes were shot.

Here is a link showing just what the trainers and the dogs did when they weren't filming.
These pictures were taken by Mark - photography is something he's very proud of:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10189535@N02/page14/