Buck’s Story

In October 2018, Jessica Steele-Sanders was looking for a family pet.

Brody, her beloved farm collie rescue dog, was almost fourteen years old, and Jessica thought it was time to find a companion for him in his golden years. In April 2005, she’d found Brody on the animal shelter aggregate site Petfinder.com, so she took to Petfinder once again in search of another farm collie like Brody.

A farm collie is a medium-sized herding breed, known by multiple names but most similar to a border collie or an Australian shepherd, or to the old-fashioned Scotch shepherd/collie. Dogs like these have been a staple of American farms since the 1800s for a reason: they’re sensitive, loyal, and smart as a whip. What Jessica found while looking for a second farm collie was a suspected farm collie/St. Bernard mix in Emporia, Kansas — a 1200 mile drive from her home in Los Angeles, California.

The dog’s name was Buckley.

Jessica knew from seeing a single photo that she had to learn more about this skinny stray. You see, her husband Chris Sanders was currently in the midst of principle photography on his latest film, 20th Century Studios’ “The Call of the Wild,” based on Jack London’s classic adventure novel about a St. Bernard/Scotch shepherd mixed breed dog… named Buck.

It must be kismet, Jessica thought. She’d had a similar feeling when she ran across Brody’s Petfinder photo all those years ago, and she’d gained a treasured companion then by following her heart. This dog was the same sort of mixed breed as “The Call of the Wild”’s Buck and even shared a similar name! It seemed like a sign that Buckley was meant to be a part of their family, so she contacted the shelter and made arrangements to meet him.

Because Chris was directing the movie, he couldn’t make the trip out to Kansas, so Jessica loaded up Brody in a rented SUV and made the two-day drive herself. She was anxious when she pulled up to the Emporia Kansas Animal Shelter on the morning of October 22nd, 2018: what if Buckley and Brody didn’t get along? What if Buckley didn’t like her? She wouldn’t adopt a dog that wasn’t a good fit for her home, but it sure would be a shame to come all this way and go back to California empty-handed.

Fortunately, Buckley was a joy from the very beginning. Upon meeting Jessica, he jumped up and barked excitedly in her face — “Oh, you have a big voice!” she laughed — but seemed eager to sit politely when asked, and he showed no aggression in the slightest toward her or Brody. He was underweight and recovering from a secondary skin infection, but he seemed otherwise healthy and was extremely good-natured. Because Buckley had been at the shelter for three weeks, his adoption fee had been discounted to $25. While filling out paperwork, Jessica asked the wonderful women working at the shelter if they’d named Buckley after Buck from “The Call of the Wild,” given his similarity in mixed breed, but it had just been a marvelous coincidence.

The first place Jessica went after the two-day drive back to Los Angeles was the “Call of the Wild” set on Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, California, to introduce Buckley to his new dad, Chris. Jessica had grown accustomed to bringing Brody to set every time she visited, so it seemed natural to bring Brody’s new baby brother, too. Buckley loved Chris from the start, and he seemed to enjoy tagging along on set to spend time with his new family.

At that point, “The Call of the Wild”’s producers had “cast” every dog character in the film except for the main character, Buck. All of the dogs were going to be computer-generated photorealistic animation (“Why CGI?”), and each one but Buck had a real-life canine counterpart that had been digitally scanned to create a CG model. Buck was being built from scratch. His CG model was based on a Bernese mountain dog (at the request of one of the producers), but that design was proving problematic: not only was it difficult to see a black dog in nighttime scenes, but it was also hard to read the dog’s facial expressions due to its dark coloration. When the producers met Buckley and learned of his story, they asked if it was possible to base Buck’s model on him. Jessica and Chris agreed, so Buckley was scanned in December 2018 and recreated digitally as Buck!

The final model seen in the film differs from Buckley’s scan in two significant ways: it was sized up a bit to match Buck’s 140-pound description in the book; and, as Buckley’s fur grew back in and he began to fill out, the CG Buck model was altered to accurately depict Buckley’s floofy new tail.

(If you’d like to read more about the CGI process and see additional images, including a video clip of Buck’s CG model as well as a line-up of all the dogs, check out our behind-the-scenes section.)

Throughout the post-production process, during which a team of talented animators from MPC Montreal brought the CG dogs to life, Buckley continued to serve as live-action reference for Buck — especially when it came to his beautifully expressive eyes. A fortuitous snowfall up at Jessica and Chris’s central California cabin even provided the perfect demonstration of how snow interacted with Buckley’s fur!