How Britain’s “Ugliest Dog” Turned Into a Movie Star

On July 26, Deadpool and Wolverine will hit theaters across the United States. The third Deadpool movie stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the title roles—but, more importantly, it will introduce filmgoers to Peggy, a pug/Chinese crested mix making her film debut as Deadpool’s canine pal, Dogpool.

The studio has kept the plot of Deadpool and Wolverine under wraps, but we can tell you the wild story of how a five-ish-year-old civilian dog was swept out of her quotidian routine and ended up leaping into the arms of a superhero. Hint: it involves cheese.

A star is Googled

Holly Clark adopted Peggy in 2018, when she was around six months old. She is an unconventional-looking dog. Most of her body is hairless—she’s part Chinese crested, after all—and the hair she does have is unevenly distributed and scruffy. Her tongue is always hanging out. This is to say that Peggy is not about to win any conformation ribbons—and, in 2023, she was named “Britain’s ugliest dog” in a contest run by a photo-printing company.

Deadpool and Wolverine filmed in the United Kingdom, and the script featured Dogpool—a canine companion to Deadpool whose look mirrors her human counterpart’s disfigured visage. So, Reynolds said in an interview with the TV show Extra, when producers were looking for a dog to fill that role, they Googled “ugliest dog in Britain.” Peggy came up, and they knew right away they’d found the right dog for the part. Soon, Holly’s phone rang. She and her husband, Luke, “received a phone call asking if we would be happy for Peg to be in a feature film,” says Holly, “although we weren’t told what it was. We agreed, and here we are.”

Lights, camera, desensitization

Peggy had the look, but she was not trained for movie stardom. She was a lockdown dog, wasn’t very socialized, and only knew basic commands like “sit,” “stay,” and “bed.” She needed a crash course in acting.

That’s where Julie Tottman, who has been training dogs to star in TV shows and movies since the 1990s, came in. Peggy stayed with Tottman and her four dogs—all of whom had already worked in the movies—for ten weeks before filming on Deadpool and Wolverine began.

“The first couple of weeks,” Tottman says, “were pretty much having her at home and getting her used to me giving her lots of treats. She’s a very greedy girl, so that was really helpful. She very quickly learned that it was a happy, treat-filled house. We’d just bond and do very basic training to start with…She took to it so quickly. She loved it.”

Tottman then got Peggy used to the sights and sounds on the set, and introduced her to the cast. 

Six weeks ahead of filming, Peggy started visiting the set for costume fittings. Those trips were also opportunities to use desensitization and counterconditioning techniques to make sure the set was a fun place for her. On those trips, Tottman says, Peggy would “have a little walk around the set, and stand in the corner so she could see the booms and camera equipment. Then I’d do a little bit of training on the set, and that became a massively positive place, and I put a lot of time into doing that with her.”

“You don’t want to throw too much at them too fast,” Tottman says, considering that “a film set is quite a big, scary place. So it’s desensitizing them and making sure they feel comfortable in many, many different places. You start with less-crowded places and build it up.” By the way, this goes for socializing and training any dog, not only one who’s going to star in a big action movie. Going at the dog’s pace, being patient, and backing up a step when the dog shows signs of stress are essential whenever you’re trying to get your dog used to something new.

Before the cameras started rolling, Peggy had time to get familiar with Reynolds. “When Peggy first met Ryan,” Tottman remembers, “she was just ‘ruff, ruff, ruff,’ barking at him. We spent little sessions beforehand taking Peggy to [Ryan’s] trailer. He would give her treats, and she would sit on his lap, and so she got to know him really well.”

Then things got serious. “We had to train her to lick his face,” Tottman says. “And that involved a lot of squeeze-y cheese.” Once Peggy saw her co-star’s face as a source of cheese, it was easy to get her to lick him. While you won’t see cheese on Reynolds’ face in the actual movie (at least we don’t think you will—we don’t have any spoilers), Peggy was always rewarded for performing her tricks correctly. “She knew,” Tottman says. “She would lick, lick, lick, lick, and the treat would come when they cut.”

Taking the leap

Building up to Peggy’s toughest trick—a leap into Deadpool’s arms, followed by the aforementioned face-licking—was a step-by-step process. At first, Tottman says, Peggy “Wouldn’t know that the person is going to catch her correctly. It’s quite an ask for a dog to do that to a stranger. So that was probably the hardest thing.”

As such, getting Peggy to perform without hesitation took time. Forcing Peggy to “face her fear” would have been upsetting for her, and would have led to an unconvincing performance as well. At first, Peggy would simply run to an assistant trainer holding a treat. Once she was comfortable with that, Tottman says, “the person would raise slightly, and Peggy would put her feet up on the trainer. And then, gradually, we go to a chair. Peggy would jump onto the chair  [and then] onto the person’s lap. And build it up like that.”

Eventually, the training incorporated a buzzer that Peggy associated with the treats she’d get for a job well done. “They know that where the buzzer sound is coming from is where the treats are,” says Tottman. “So we can put a buzzer, say, on the shoulder, so she has to get up there to get the treat. So it becomes a really good game—really good fun.” And the resulting trick should be fun for audiences to see, too.

Peggy stays grounded

After her adventure, Peggy is now back to normal life with Holly and Luke. Holly says that Peggy’s favorite activity is still “sofa snuggles, wedged as tightly as she can between us.” And while she’s not learning any acrobatic tricks at home, Peggy does often show off what Holly calls “a particular talent for snoring.”

But that doesn’t mean that Peggy is exactly the way she was before hanging out with Reynolds and Jackman. Ultimately, Tottman says, being in the movie “made [Peggy] a much happier little lady, because [at first] she was a little bit scared of certain things.”

Tottman fondly recalls the moment when she was sure she and Peggy had really bonded—after a month apart due to the actors’ strike, Peggy returned to Tottman’s house. “She went absolutely mental,” Tottman remembers. “She’d run out of the room into the kitchen, and she’d run back in and go mental all over again. She did it like six times, like she was surprising herself that she was back. It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”

For her part, Holly hopes that Peggy’s star turn inspires more people to open their homes to dogs whose appearance isn’t what they might have imagined. “Don’t write off the dogs that look a bit different,” she says. “The old ones, with one eye and three legs, have just as much love to give as any other dog. I love dogs of every breed, color, shape and size, but I’ll always have a soft spot for an underdog.”

Header image: (L-R): Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan, Dogpool, and Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.