Hollywood is looking for more four-legged actors, who can do a whole lot more than just sit and stay.
Grace Granatelli with her dog, Sketch, was just one of the dogs who got a shot at their big break this past weekend at the Pets on Q Pupfestival here in Phoenix. Some pet owners came prepared for the odd set of evaluations they would undergo — including a temperament test.
The whole thing was run by Colleen Wilson, CEO and founder of Pets on Q and the star of the show "Pet Stars" on Netflix, which gives viewers a peek into the often weird world of pet casting.
They represent pets of all kinds: dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, farm animals, insects and even invertebrates. But these are not your average pets.
Wilson joined The Show to talk more about the world of animal acting and how her own dog led her there.

Full conversation
COLLEEN WILSON: I fell face first into it, honestly. I was the private banker in Manhattan, so I was working in New York City doing that, and I rescued a few dogs that were a little bit crazy. And, people were asking me to train their dogs because of how far my dogs had come and I'm like, “I'm not a dog trainer.”
And I figured if I'm going to teach other people's dogs, I need to learn from the best. So, then I apprenticed under someone who did production work with animals, and I was like, there's a much easier way to do this. And I just kind of started it as a side thing and it kind of took over my life.
LAUREN GILGER: So, now you're running an entire company doing this, and you kind of are casting animal talent like other agents might cast, you know, human talent, right?
WILSON: Yes, exactly.
GILGER: How does it work? Like, what does an animal have to do when they come to a casting call like the one here in Phoenix to get noticed?
WILSON: Yeah, so it depends on overall what the producers need. I mean, they say that that would be first, but for this one that's happening in Phoenix, we're actually looking for dogs for a commercial and more stuff is actually coming out to Phoenix.
So, we need a better roster of animals in the Phoenix area, and what we're looking for are really well tempered animals that are competent and not afraid of weird things, because, on set, there's like booms that fly by and cameras go, you know, you kind of work in that field too, so, you understand.
It can be stressful, it can be fast paced, and we need really confident animals that understand the scope of work that's happening and they're, they're very well trained, great on and off leash, just the, the perfect unicorn animals are the kind of the ones you're looking for.
GILGER: OK, and there are some that are trained for specific skills and tasks that you cast. Give us the sense of, like, what goes into and what went into maybe training your own dog to be involved in something like this.
WILSON: Yeah. So there's a lot that goes into it. Number one, temperament is the first thing we look for. And there are some jobs where like, it's just an actor in the background walking a dog. That's a temperament approved animal. So really, you can be at many levels to be able to get into the industry.
But, if you're looking to do more advanced things like my dog has done, you need to have really good marks, so the ban will be able to go to a mark, go to another mark, come back to you on and off leash, have control of their. So, looking left, looking right, head down on objects, pawing at things, being able to take things.
And overall, we want to see the animals that are natural with an actor, so it doesn't come across as forced because on camera, they need to act. They need to, it's, it's kind of crazy that like the ones that they do it and they love it and it's, they know it's their job. The ones that are very intelligent, they actually don't make great house pets, because they need a job and they love doing it.
My dog actually, he's, he's from a shelter. He's completely deaf, so I trained him in sign language, and it's great on set because I don't need to talk to him and they don't need to cut my audio out, telling him what to do. But yeah, no, so we just kind of started small and you build your way up to learn all those things.
GILGER: Those are very specific things. And, and this is part of a very specific method, right? The PERFORM method, this is an acronym.
WILSON: Yes. Yeah. P is for polished obedience within species, because we don't just work dogs. We do cats, we do horses, they are reptiles, rodents,, all sorts of animals get cast in all different types of productions, we just don't do exotic animals. E is marks, excellent marksmanship, so being able to go to and from marks. Yeah, it kind of just goes down, and refined head movement. It just, yeah, goes all the way down.

GILGER: Super specific things. OK, so tell us some of the things like you have lots of animals. You've cast in lots of things that people have probably seen. Where would we recognize some of the animals that you have cast or, or your own dog?
WILSON: Well, my dog's been on Pet Stars on Netflix. I mean, that's our show. And then he's done a few indie movies. He's done music videos, he's been in GQ magazine, New York Fashion Week, and other animals.
I mean, we have worked with some major A-list celebrities, and their music videos. They're probably the most popular person right now. We're not supposed to say the names of them, but I'm pretty sure the audience can pick up who that is. Commercials and music videos for that amazing artist that we love so much.
And yeah, I know there's a variety of movies and everything, you know, every animal for each role like we just love and it's very different. Yeah, we have, we have 3 animals working on set today, so all across the country. So we do stuff from the East Coast, West Coast, and even internationally.
GILGER: Wow. So I mean, I wonder how much this industry may have changed. You mentioned at the beginning when you got into this thinking there are better ways to do this. I mean, this is an industry that goes back to like, Lassie. Like, I recently watched Homeward Bound with my kids and I wondered how they got the animals to do these things, right? This is a long history in Hollywood.
WILSON: It's a very long history. It's a heavily debated and controversial side of the industry. Yeah, for like Lassie, Homeward Bound, they're body double animals. So, whenever we're doing, like we just did a movie last week and we had three different dogs play the same character. And they all are the same breed. They all look very similar. One needed to be really scary and bark at a bad guy. Well, the next one needed to be really safe for the good guy to be able to cuddle and act like a little teddy bear puppy, like a sweet little thing. And it also gives the animals breaks, so kind of just depends.
Making the industry better is where you started with this, that's kind of was my whole goal of even starting the company was to make the industry better. There's American Humane, that goes on set to make sure no animals were harmed, but our methodology kind of certifies the animals before they even go on set.
So, we look for healthy animals, we don't hire out abused animals. We just don't hire out wranglers that aren't going to put safety first for the animals. We just make sure they're certified before going on set. So, we know we have a confident animal that loves working and that loves their job.
That helps cut the majority of the abuse. When people force animals that shouldn't be there, that's where the problems start. And so that was kind of my simple solution is to offer a certificate, have a public marketplace that's called The Animal List for, to find in higher animal talent. And yeah, that's how it's already gotten so much better. We still have ways to go, but because of that simple introduction, it's already, we see massive improvements and, and we're really excited to keep growing this.

GILGER: That's really interesting. OK, so you say today people really want animal actors versus animal influencers, which we probably see a lot of today. What's the difference?
WILSON: An animal actor, I mean, we do have those that cross over too. We have some that are animal actors and influencers. So, an influencer or a creator is an animal that has a large following online that can influence an audience's buying decisions by posting a product, right? So, it gets people to buy the product.
An animal actor is an animal that's trained to go on set and work on production and act like they're a part of that family in that shot. Acts like they are grabbing the bag in a good way. You know, that's the difference where the animal actors are paid to go on set and do that one task, and you could probably already tell like those Lassies of the world and all that they're not really working as much anymore. It's going more towards pets and all that. So we're kind of loving that.