This two-act, five-scene series is an attempt to capture my dog Gideon’s time as Sandy in Annie—from early prep through the full run of the show. What started as a training project with a very young adolescent dog quickly became a real-time lesson in behavior, learning, and managing the unexpected.
Each scene dives into a different piece of the process: building the required behaviors, troubleshooting things that absolutely did not go according to plan, and adjusting training in an environment where you don’t get to hit pause and try again. Along the way, there were also a lot of small, behind-the-scenes moments that made it an experience to remember.
If nothing else, this blog is a look at what happens when you try to prepare a dog to “see it all”—and what they teach you in return.
Scene One: Those Infernal Drums
Gideon started prepping to be in Annie when he was a year and two months old, or thereabouts. In total: five two-show Saturdays with a matinee and evening performance, five student matinees in the mornings for school groups of up to 500 (!) students, a few red carpets, one interview, and altogether twenty-four performances.
To start, if I ever do this again, I would not do it with a very young adolescent dog. But I will say this was an excellent bonding experience with my very young adolescent dog. I learned about what makes Gideon tick and what ticks him off.
My goal was for him to “see it all” in rehearsal. I learned from Ken Ramirez that we should be training our learners to expect novelty, and within the confines of the theater, that was my goal. Which is hard, hard, hard for a young dog. He is grappling with his confidence with sociability, learning from me and other dogs, and was then put into a new environment to challenge everything he had already learned. In the first iterations and repetitions, the acting was real to him. Miss Hannigan blowing a whistle on stage was an affront. How dare that man hold a laundry basket over his shoulder? (That’s literally his role, Gideon — he’s Bundles the laundry man.) Gideon got to see a ton in rehearsal, including the photographers and videographers that got excellent footage of the cast, including Benjamin Rose Photography, who took these photos.
During the dress rehearsals, I found out that Gideon was disturbed by the drums. While he had been performing and hitting his cues with piano accompaniment and a limited orchestra, once the percussion was added it really altered his experience of the music. The snare drum reverberated under his feet. The crescendo of “Tomorrow” was running up his legs. During the previews, he was backing away from the orchestra pit during the end of his big scene, so the (amazing and kind) director called an extra rehearsal.
The music director later told me he found my training session fascinating, and I will say, it was very “dog trainer-y.” I was marking and rewarding Gideon for approaching the orchestra pit and asked that the percussionist play the snare drum continually. We ran through his simple cues while the percussionist played. Then, I requested that the drummer play the snares for 20 seconds, stop for 20 seconds, restart, etc., so that we’d simulate sudden stops and starts. As always, I was trying to expedite and not take up too much time, not realizing that the music director was actually very interested. Gideon never loved the snares, not going to lie, but he was much less likely to be notably worried from an audience perspective after this work.
I’d like to tell you this was a speed bump and nothing else went wrong, but I’d like to remind you that Gideon is still not even one and a half as I write this.
Scene Two: The Required Behavior
To prepare for his role, I taught Gideon a solid “go to mark” cue—this involved sending him to a visual aid on the ground and staying there indefinitely. He really didn’t have many skills going into this training, a loose knowledge of sit and down and then some play-based movement with me. Let’s talk about what we needed to build for it to look right.
Picture this: a dog is lost in New York City and narrowly escapes dog catchers eager to make a quick few cents on stray dogs. He comes upon an equally lost child who beckons him. She sings him a sweet song of what could come tomorrow if they just hold onto their hope. A cop then shows up to challenge the pair. Who does he belong to? The little girl calls him, but he doesn’t know what to do. She calls again—is it the right move? She calls a final time, and he runs to her, the only kindness he’s known in a long while.
Super cute moment! If it works. It is an impressive dog that feels good just from the act of working; most want, or at least enjoy, outside reinforcement. Actors feel good when they get applause and standing ovations. Gideon doesn’t work for the applause, so we had to pepper in the cheese intelligently.
The actual behavior we were looking for was a “go to mark” behavior when he was called by Sky, who played Annie. He then needed to remain in position while she sang half of “Tomorrow.” Next, he needed to remain in position for dialogue between the cop and Annie, before finally doing a series of behaviors ending in a recall to Annie.
The big moment in the series of behaviors would be that Sandy initially ignores Annie, then, in an applause-worthy effort, he’d run to her on her last call. Early on, the director decided Gideon laying down would suffice for our needs for his moment of ignoring Annie. In the dog trainer world, this could be considered a recall refusal, since the cue was very similar to the actual recall cue.
The moment goes, “Here Sandy, here boy, here Sandy”—a call from Annie, all lines intended to be ignored. Then a big “Saaaaaandy” was the actual recall. To be cute, I wanted a little something extra on his recall refusal, so I taught him a little “head down” behavior where he rests his head on the floor in response to her first calls. He had it in the bag in rehearsals.
My expectation of where this sequence could break down was that the final recall would be far more reinforcing, since movement and action are typically self-reinforcing. This means I expected he would start taking earlier and earlier portions of the sequence to be his cue to do his final behavior—that he would jump the cue and just immediately run to Sky. I didn’t see any breakdown at first; we trained this behavior until blue in the face. Tom played Annie in our living room more than he’d like to admit. Then, something interesting happened, though maybe I should have seen it coming. He stayed through his “Here Sandy, here boy, here Sandy” sequence, then the actual big recall behavior broke down. He first started doing it more slowly, then in one show he just turned around to make his way back to me. Thankfully, some artful cop improv saved the moment, but my anxiety was spiking.
I thought it through and wracked my brain. In my moments of stress, I reach out to people to commiserate and brainstorm. Everyone that humored me during the show run deserves a medal. Two medals even. At this juncture, I messaged Donna. “Can I ask annoying dog trainer questions?” And, like always, she came through. I sent her videos of both moments, and she told me she didn’t think it was fear; she thought it was confusion. My big worry had been that he was afraid of what came in the final sequence. I was worried it all came back to the drum sequence, the leashing-up moment, anything that followed. I worried it was ruining my puppy. But Donna noted he seemed to not really know what he was supposed to do at that moment in the sequence; in essence, we’d trained the refusal too well, and poor Gideon’s puppy brain was like, “wait, what?”
The workaround for this was…Gideon should hang out with Sky more. Easy when she is a kid that loves dogs and especially loves Gideon. We also changed up his reward for the recall a bit so it was more obvious that that moment was going to be rewarded heavily. We also made it a point to go visit Sky before every show; they played with his toys and ran through his behaviors. I also added in a quick onstage rehearsal every show before the house seats opened, his own personal “lift and fight call.” He never refused the recall again. Again, I’d say “wow, what a relief,” but you know that this is five scenes, so there is more to come in this saga.
Scene Three: Gideon Loves the Kid(s)
There were 16 kids in the cast of Annie at Wheelock Family Theater. During rehearsals, Gideon gravitated toward the quieter kids who would just calmly pet him while he relaxed in the house seats. Rehearsals were an opportunity for him to be surrounded by kids who were adoring him; he’d enter the building to a chorus of kids shouting “Gideon!” from the stage, much to the director’s and kid wranglers’ chagrin. The youngest girls in the group were both seven years old, and both are named Audrey. Here is an assortment of questions they asked me during rehearsals:
“Why is his nose wet?”
“Does Gideon ever eat ham?”
“How do you know he’s a boy?” (This one was fun to answer.)
“What do you give Gideon for lunch?” (Followed quickly by being incredulous that he doesn’t eat lunch and surrounding questions.)
While Gideon was in his early stages of struggling in his big scene, the orphans took to saying “Gideon, LOCK IN,” to him as they came off stage. Here is a line of cute orphans, singing the ending notes of “It’s the Hard Knock Life” as they file off stage. They each pass Gideon, who is being held in my arms before he takes up his spot in the wings. They stop and pet him and say “lock in,” and it becomes part of the routine — an expected moment in the wings before he goes into his big scene.
What was it Gideon was “locking in” for, you ask? Remember, he was starting to refuse to recall on his “Saaaaaandy” cue that Sky gives. To fix this, Sky and Gideon started to add in special bonding sessions prior to each show. Gideon and I would go up to the orphans’ dressing room and just let Sky play with Gideon. They would fool around in the carpeted hallways of the space, then sometimes quickly run through Gideon’s recall cues. Here is where the expected degradation of behavior started. My initial prediction was that Gideon would start recalling earlier and earlier on the “Here Sandy, Here Boy” portion of the cue. Lo and behold, my prediction came true. He began to anticipate his next cue and just did the big recall. Sometimes the comedic timing of this worked great, and the audience would all laugh as he happily ran to Annie. It was different every time, but he always went to Sky in every show. My favorite moment was when I was joking with the cop in the scene in the wings and she said to Gideon, “If you go right to her, that negates my whole character arc.” Her character is supposed to smugly watch him not move when she calls, but man — does he want to prove that officer wrong.
There were instances later in the show where Sky would get up from her spot next to Gideon to go call him, and he’d quietly just follow along behind her. Talk about anticipating a cue — she didn’t even give the cue; her walking away is the cue. Just when you think a dog isn’t paying attention, you find out they know too much — they know what your end goal is. I want to state for the record, when Gideon and I rehearsed this between shows or in the wings, he did it perfectly for me. Something about Sky and their relationship — he loves that kid. But also, once he was actually performing, there was no opportunity to go back and fix the behavior. We can’t stop the show and make it go right or remove his reward. So, we got what we got.
Just remember, he had to do all of this with an understudy too.
Stay tuned… the final two scenes take the stage next month.
And while you do, please enjoy this video of Gideon practicing his recall cue with the understudy.