Some friendships transcend lifetimes. In A Dog’s Journey, the sequel to the 2017 film A Dog’s Purpose, beloved dog Bailey finds his new destiny and forms an unbreakable bond that will lead him, and the people he loves, to places they never imagined.
Bailey (voiced by Josh Gad, Frozen) is living the good life on the Michigan farm of his ‘boy,’ Ethan (Dennis Quaid) and Ethan’s wife, Hannah (Marg Helgenberger, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation). Bailey even has a new playmate – Ethan and Hannah’s baby granddaughter, CJ. The problem is that CJ’s mom, Gloria (Betty Gilpin,of Netflix’s GLOW fame), decides to take CJ away.
As Bailey’s soul prepares to leave this life for a new one, he makes a promise to Ethan to find CJ and protect her at any cost.
Thus begins Bailey’s adventure through multiple lives filled with love, friendship and devotion as he, CJ (Kathryn Prescott, 24: Legacy) and CJ’s best friend, Trent (Henry Lau) experience joy and heartbreak, music and laughter, and a few really good belly rubs.
Unarguably, the biggest stars of A Dog’s Journey are the enchanting dogs that were on set throughout production. It was impossible for the cast and crew of obsessed pooch lovers not to play with, coddle, dote upon and love the pups throughout the shoot. Because they were the biggest names on set, they got well-deserved diva treatment. “They did have the biggest trailers,” Henry Lau says, laughing. “I’m not kidding! Their trailers were bigger than any other actor’s.”
As the narrative begins soon after where A Dog’s Purpose ends (that shoot wrapped in 2016), it was up to the production’s animal coordinator and lead trainer Bonnie Judd to find and train a new Bailey –Buddy in the final scenes of the first film and the opening ones of this one – for this chapter, as well as four other hero dogs for the film. Judd worked previously on A Dog’s Way Home. “The bond I saw that she created and maintained with the animals was extraordinary,” producer Gavin Polone says. “I knew it could only be Bonnie and her team.”
The owner of five dogs, director Gail Mancuso discovered that even crew members who professed not to care about dogs one way or the other had a change of heart after only a couple weeks on set. “Once people came into our temporary family, I could see we converted a lot of people to dog lovers,” she says. “When everyone saw how Bonnie related to and treated those amazing dogs – and how safe the environment was for them – the only question was: ‘Can I adopt one of them?’”