Arthur the King and 10 more dog stars to love

Want to give your emotions a workout? Tear ducts feeling a little dusty? We can help with that. Action adventure movie Arthur the King is based on the real-life story of Swedish professional endurance racer Mikael Lindnord (who becomes Michael Light, played by Mark Wahlberg), and the stray dog who became his hero during his final gruelling 700km, 10-day race in Ecuador. 

“When you’re Adventure Racing, you do everything for each other. Arthur came into our team. He was one of the team. That’s why we gave him our food. He needed it to survive,” says Mikael. In fact, Mikael became so devoted to Arthur that he refused to be parted from him. So these days this scrappy stray is leading the soft life, and he’s the face of the Arthur Foundation, which is campaigning to protect Ecuador’s less fortunate strays. “When we met, he had thin, greasy fur. But in Sweden, especially in wintertime, he would get super fluffy, like a bear. He loved the snow and the cold,” Mikael reveals. 

Read on to learn about the dog who played Arthur, and meet 10 more of our dog stars on Showmax. 

Stream Arthur the King now.

A little dog goes a long way

Mikael was on set throughout the shoot for Arthur the King to ensure that every detail was accurate. But while adventure racing equipment like clothes, bikes and helmets can be bought or copied, actors can be trained, and Mikael even showed the movie’s racing team how to tie their shoes, where do you begin to find a dog like Arthur? 

Meet Ukai, trained and handled by Mathilde de Cagny. He performed 90% of Arthur’s scenes, with the other 10% being covered by lookalikes Beau and Hunter. “He looks just like Arthur,” says film producer Tucker Tooley. “We didn’t have to zhuzh him up or dye his hair. He’s got a lot of personality in the eyes and has been so well trained.” 

While poor Arthur was on his last legs by the end of the race and needed emergency vet care in real life, Ukai got to stay in hotels and mingle with movie stars. “He’d come to my house in the morning, and I made sure I had lots of goodies saved for him. He loves hot dogs and steak,” says Mark, who stayed right next door to Ukai at the same beachfront hotel as all the film’s dog stars. “Every day the dogs could run and chase coconuts and swim in the ocean. It was magic for all of us,” adds Mathilde. The production team did their part, too, padding the kayak where he’d jump into it, and preparing gourmet meatballs for the scenes in which Michael shares his food with Arthur. 

Running and rock climbing and kayaking were part of the job any well-trained dog could do. But Ukai needed to be an actor, like Mark. “It wasn’t just, sit there and eat that food,” explains director Simon Cellan Jones. “He had to stop. He had to be unwilling to go places. He had to be worried, to be angry. He had to have all these emotions and human aspects. He’s portraying a dog who is emotional above everything, but also determined and wise and has experienced suffering and being an outcast. He’s in search of something as well. A family, a home, a life.”

What a good boy! Now stay, staayyyyyy. Because we have 10 more dog stars who want a paw shake.

1. A Dog’s Way Home

Family friendly adventure based on the novel of the same name by W. Bruce Cameron. After Denver animal control tries to confiscate Bella (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) from her rescuer, Lucas (Jonah Hauer King)l, Lucas sends her to family in New Mexico, but she escapes, and sets off on a wild two-year journey to get back to him, making animal friends along the way. 

Trainer Teresa A. Miller found the perfect Bella in a shelter in Tennessee. Meet Rottweiler/German Shepherd Shelby – a non-stop tail wagger with a lot of heart in her eyes and emotions in her eyebrows. This eager to please dog quickly mastered the movie-making basics of taking direction, but it’s her eager and loving nature that really made her a star. In her post-Hollywood career, Shelby is now a therapy dog. 

2. A Dog’s Journey

In this sequel to A Dog’s Purpose, writer W Bruce Cameron tugs at our heartstrings again with a family-friendly adventure comedy based on his 2012 novel of the same name. The spirit of a very good boy named Buddy keeps being reincarnated (as different dogs, all voiced by Josh Gad) so he can stay with his beloved human, Ethan (Dennis Quaid), and then watch over Ethan’s granddaughter, CJ (Kathryn Prescott and Abby Ryder Fortson).

Buddy (played by Odin) starts the story as a St Bernard/Australian Shepherd, then becomes a beagle-Cavalier King Charles Spaniel cross named Molly (Lemy), a Boerboel named Big Dog (Phil), and a Biewer Terrier named Max (Belle). To prove that Max is really Molly and Bailey, the little dog shares Molly’s cancer detection skills and performs a trick that Ethan taught Bailey. 

While reincarnation of a beloved companion is a beautiful thought, it also means viewers will see multiple dog deaths in this film. So the dogs sometimes had to not respond when someone was desperately calling their name. The first time actress Kathryn Prescott had to cry over “Max” dying while singing to him, Belle jumped up to lick her face and tried to comfort her!

3. War Dogs and I

South African Kobus Olivier, CEO of Ukraine Cricket Federation, was stuck in his apartment in Kiev in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February 2022. This documentary follows his efforts to flee the bombing with his four dogs, Tiekie, Ollie, Jessie and Kaya, his struggles as a South African denied refugee status, and his determination to keep his dogs at his side despite the complications of moving animals across European borders. 

Writer-director  Stefan Enslin combines cellphone footage, camera interviews, drone footage and radio commentary to take us inside their incredible journey. And the real-life dogs are the undoubted stars of the show, performing their own “stunts”.

4. Think Like a Dog

Family sci-fi comedy. Mom and dad Ellen (Megan Fox) and Lukas (Josh Duhamel) are baffled when their 12-year-old son Oliver (Gabriel Bateman) accidentally forms a telepathic bond with his Labradoodle Henry (voiced by Todd Stashwick) during a school science experiment. 

With direct eye-contact being all important to show communication between Oliver and Henry, trainer Sarah Clifford had to make dog actor Jayce listen to her, but keep his focus on actor Gabriel Bateman, who would then give Jayce a treat as a reward instead of Sarah doing it. It’s one of those seemingly simple things that turns out to be a bit complicated and meant that they had to train Gabriel and Jayce together for the film.

5. Colin from Accounts Season 1

Real-life Australian couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall created, write and star in this romantic comedy series about two single people, Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall), who’re brought together when Gordon runs over an adorable dog after Ashley flirtatiously flashes him at a road crossing. Appalled, the two rush the dog (who they call Colin) to the closest vet and agree to take care of him together.

Animal trainer Kirsten Fedderson lent the film her own Border Terriers, Zac and Buster, to play Colin. And they turned out to be really patient when they had to spend over 20 minutes filming a scene in which Patrick pretends to make Colin talk in funny accents by moving his mouth around. In one interview Harriet claimed that if she were Colin, Zac or Buster, she would have just bitten Patrick at that point. 

6. Strays

This live action comedy movie centres on naive Border Terrier Reggie (Will Ferrell) whose trashy owner Doug (Will Forte) keeps trying to get rid of him. One day when Reggie isn’t able to make it home after one of his “games” with Doug, he falls in with a street stray gang led by Bug the Boston Terrier (Jamie Foxx), Maggie the Australian Shepherd (Isla Fisher), and Hunter the Great Dane (Randall Park). Together, as a kind of therapy group, they try to show Reggie that there’s a better life outside, and that Doug doesn’t deserve him. 

Trainer Mathilde de Cagny brought in Sophie, along with a body double named Boy, to play Reggie. And one of Sophie’s cleverest tricks was playing Reggie as a naive and cheerful soul who believes that Doug can do no wrong, even when he yells at him and throws things at him. Behind the scenes, Will read his lines while sitting next to Sophie, getting louder and meaner each time he read them, while Mathilde offered Sopie a treat every time she sat there looking lovingly at Will as if he was made of cheese.

7. Brooklyn Nine-Nine

If you love this cop comedy, you already know one of the show’s best quotes revolves around Captain Raymond Holt (the late Andre Braugher) and his husband Kevin’s (Marc Evan Jackson) Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Cheddar. Don’t let his joy over his owl toy Mr Hootsworth fool you, Cheddar is the alpha dog on the squad and no cashmere turtleneck is safe around him. 

In Season 4, he helps Holt to win the station’s Halloween Heist. But in Season 5’s Halloween Heist, Amy is caught trying to replace Cheddar with a lookalike, and an outraged Captain Holt exclaims, “You’re not Cheddar, you’re just some common b*****.”

Cheddar was played primarily by corgis Stewart and Stella (which is why his coat colours shift through the series), who worked with trainer Michael W Miliotti. Stewart’s special trick was a routine in which he pretended to get arrested, and then played dead when he was “shot”. Michael’s biggest problem working with Stewart was if he messed up and people laughed (like when he howled during one of Captain Holt’s speeches), he’d do it again for attention. But for anything else, Stewart liked to get paid in treats, not pets, so in one scene in which he devours a whole cake, the cake had to be made out of shaving cream.

8. Men in Black II & Men in Black: International Season 1

He might look like a chonky pug but Frank (voiced by Tim Blaney) is a Remoolian alien living in New York City, with a top secret job as Agent F, one of the Men in Black (MiB) – an interplanetary diplomatic agency monitoring human-alien contact on Earth. In MiB II, smart-mouthed Frank wants to be Agent J’s (Will Smith) new partner, but later settles for a job as the boss’s personal assistant. And in the series, we briefly see Frank on “guard dog” duty, working security at MiB’s New York Headquarters.

Two lead pugs have played Frank thanks to the long interval between the first MiB film (1997) and the series (2019). Trainer Cristie Miele mainly worked with Mushu in the first two MiB films, and he had to sit in the doggie makeup trailer so they could hide the grey in his muzzle for the second film. Wardrobe got to dress him up in his own black secret agent suit and white shirt. And in one of his most complicated scenes, he wore a little headset to communicate with other agents while hiding inside the body of a dead alien. PS: footage of Frank with a cigar between his teeth was created with CGI. 

9. See Spot Run

In this family-friendly comedy, an FBI drug-sniffing superdog named Agent II (or Spot) escapes witness protection and goes to live with mailman Gordon Smith (David Arquette), who’s also reluctantly taking care of his neighbour’s young son, James (Angus T Jones).

The film set was crammed with dogs as Gordon the mailman has several on his mail route that he’s terrified of, and we also get flashbacks to Spot’s training days when he was a puppy. Look out for canine stars Wolfie (a Sheep Dog), Zeus (a Bull Terrier), Enzo (the Jack Russel Terrier from sitcom Frasier), Linus (a French Bulldog), Auto (a Sheep Dog mix), and Andre (a St. Bernard).

“Spot” was played by five bullmastiffs – Buster, Bob, Charlie, Tyson, and Goliath – all trained to handle different tricks, including leaping up at a man and pretending to bite his crotch (using a hidden pouch of treats), standing on a platform that would move him into position to “jump” onto a shipping container, and jumping onto and over a car, which had a special non-slip spray applied to it so he wouldn’t slip off the roof or bonet. 

10. I Am Legend

Will Smith’s canine co-star is the MVP in this 2007 post apocalyptic sci-fi movie. Samantha or Sam the German Shepherd is Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville’s (Will Smith) only companion as he struggles to survive alone in the remains of New York City following the outbreak of the Krippin Virus, which turns humans into intelligent zombie-vampire-like mutants called “Darkseekers”. Sam seems to understand and follow Robert’s instructions, But more than that, she keeps him going. 

Abbey (with Kona filling in on some scenes when Abbey refused to play fetch) played Sam with the help of trainer Steve Berens, who wouldn’t part with her even when Will Smith begged! Abbey crossed the rainbow bridge in March 2023 at the age of 15 and in April this year, Will posted a tribute to her on his Instagram, which he captioned “The goodness girl”. Will has said several times that it really felt to him as if Abbey understood everything he said to her. And if you want a good cry, watch Robert singing Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds to Sam one last time after she’s bitten by a KV-infected dog.