🏆 The Top 10 Dog Performances of All Time

Give that good boy an Oscar. Here are the best dog performances of all time…

With so much pomp and circumstance surrounding awards season, we’re eagerly awaiting the epic conclusion at this year’s Oscars.

Changing the mainstream opinion of whether or not a dog should be allowed to take home an Oscar won’t happen in this post (or ever). So, rather then making a case for whether or not dogs should be allowed on this year’s ballot, we’re hijacking award season to acknowledge some of the greatest pet performances on the big screen.

Do we love movies? Yeah. Are we qualified to make these claims? Absolutely not.

Nevertheless, here’s our Top 10 list of greatest canine performances. Welcome to The Juicies.

10. Hooch, Turner and Hooch

The most crucial element in any buddy cop movie is the dynamic of the central pairing, which lays a foundation of difference and tension: a graying racist and a sternly principled minority, a grizzled lifer and a naïve rookie, a by-the-book rule-follower and a loose cannon. The ‘man-child grows up’ trope often saddles its fratty lone wolf with a baby, but this surprisingly sensitive (and lucrative) comedy treats Hooch more like a grown-up rather than a puppy, right down to his noble final scene. His hyperacute sense of smell makes him a natural for investigative work, but the film respects him for the strength of his convictions most of all. Hooch doesn’t disappoint.

9. Slinky Dog, Toy Story

The primitive computer animation’s weird smoothness — though differentiating the texture of his leathery ears against his plastic body was impressive, for 1995 — does nothing to detract from Slink’s overall lovability, nor does his gravelly Texan twang. When a miscommunication makes it look like jealous cowboy Woody has offed the hot new spaceman in the toy chest, only Woody’s best gal Bo Peep and the unshakably devoted Slink believe in his innocence. Whether orchestrating a daring escape or just trying to keep up morale, he’s the one you want by your side.

8. Cujo, Cujo

It’s not often that a film casts man’s best friend as the bad guy, and when it does, there’s always some redemptive rationalization revealing that humankind started it. Stephen King, as proven in this 1983 thriller that puts a mother and son at the mercy of a rabid St. Bernard, harbors no such sympathy for our pooch pals. In a deliciously ironic turning of the tables, the Homo sapiens are trapped in a hot car while a tiger-size predator prowls in wait, gone mad with the lust to kill. There’s little more to Cujo than that, though he may have once been a good boy, his primal single-mindedness is the key to his terrifying presence.

7. Air Bud, Air Bud

Yes, yes, the reasoning of “ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball” has a thick-skulled kind of genius to it. And yes, “He Sits. He Stays. He Shoots. He Scores” is a terrific tagline. But the deeper appeal of the golden retriever going hard in the paint requires no ironic remove to appreciate; he appears to young Josh when he’s most needed, just as the youngster has lost his father and relocated to a town where he doesn’t know a soul. More than mere hooping, Air Bud’s real skill lies in his ability to realize the potent boyish fantasy of “what if the dog I think of as a best friend could actually do all the things I’d do with an actual friend?”

6. Dug, Up

If you were to X-ray the skull of the breakout talent from Pixar’s South American escapade, I like to think you’d just see one of those little monkey figurines clapping two cymbals together. The brain of the dog is laid out in hilariously plain terms via a collar translating barks to speech, generating to-the-point lines like “I have just met you, and I love you” or “I do not like the cone of shame.” Movies tend to anthropomorphize their dogs by projecting recognizably human qualities onto them, but Up’s script embraces the less bestial parts of being an animal. Dug is constantly distracted by the shadow of a squirrel in the corner of his eye. He’s unguarded with adulation and quick to despair whenever his person leaves his sight.

6. Beethoven, Beethoven

A much-needed antidote to all those movies about the soul-affirming benefits of dog parenting, this family comedy contends that caring for a pet is in fact hell and pins its action on a test of how much an average man can take before he’s broken. He ruins dinner, he destroys every possession you’ve ever loved, but dammit, one look into those droopy eyes and you can’t help a minimum of affection for the big galoot. Even if he’s a headache, anybody with a boorish relative knows that such personalities are our headaches and shall accordingly be defended to the last.

5. Pongo and Perdy, 101 Dalmations

Maybe picking both halves of the most reproductively active couple in the Disney canon is cheating, but they’re inseparable parts to a single whole. They break out from the dog pack in their anomalous characterization as parents rather than children, well-matched complements in a model marriage. They exude a reassurance that everything’s going to be okay for the presumed audience of little ones and demonstrate that the nuclear unit can still be a fun time for the older viewers.

4. Old Yeller, Old Yeller

Surely there are less traumatizing ways to teach grade schoolers about mortality, but are those ways shot in glorious Technicolor? In Disney stalwart Robert Stevenson’s foray into the Western, the Civil War has just ended, though that’s all far away from the idyllic patch of frontier where the Coates clan has raised a home. Their picturesque settler life needs a dog to be complete, and Old Yeller — so named for his distinctive yelp — proves himself by protecting sons Travis and Arliss from a rogue bear.

3. Lassie, Lassie Come Home

The hyphen-free Lassie Come Home turned the majestically maned rough collie into a household name, spun off into six more sequels during the MGM era and a mainstay TV series that ran for nineteen seasons from Eisenhower to Nixon. The camera isn’t afraid of close-ups on Lassie’s face and the dog rises to the occasion with shockingly expressive emoting. So what if dogs only possess the thoughtfulness we choose to see in them? If so, Lassie made for an exceptional vessel.

2. Gromit, The Wrong Trousers

No list of history’s great comedic duos would be complete without the mishap-prone cheese aficionado and his anthropomorphic, mute beagle. Gromit tends to play the straight man, forced to convey exasperation with his BFF’s unending hijinks through a combination of emphatic pointing and alarmed eyebrow acting. Their absurd exploits often task Gromit with holding everything together, but he still gets his laughs by pushing his competence to ridiculous extremes. He’s a good boy.

1. Toto, The Wizard of Oz

In the movie dog pantheon, Toto is lodged deepest in the collective cultural memory of the moviegoing public, and for good reason; the Wicked Witch screaming “and your little dog, too!” will ring out in nightmares as long as moving pictures exist. Just as Dorothy was an impossibly idealized farm girl, she had a dream of a dog, politely remaining in his basket until time came to spring into action.

…and that’s a wrap!

“The Squeeze”: Dog News In 60 Seconds

• 🌧️ “It’s raining cats and dogs!” Sure, Frank… but did you know how that common expression got its origin?

• 🎥 P.H. Vazak was once nominated for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. P.H. Vazak is also a dog. Mind = blown.

• 🤖 Got $3,000 laying around? Sony is dropping their first AI Robot dog.

• 📱 Google is organizing your photo album for you with their new pet recognition software. Organizing your own photo albums was so 2023 anyways…

• 👑 Queen’s orders: we need more medical detection dogs, pronto!

• 🐶 Think you know the state with the most spoiled dogs? It’s a tie for first place and you’ll never guess where…

• 🏆 It’s award season, so naturally the BAFTAs are stopping everything with a dog on site. We love a canine red carpet.

• 🍽️ End of an era: Boris and Horton, NYC’s first dog cafe, is closing its doors for good.

• 💁‍♀️ Beyonce was just compared to a dog… and it’s raising some eyebrows.

Today’s Last Laugh:

We don’t know what started this, but we believe the gold one…

@zamikaki

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