Oscars 2019: The history of dog movies at the Academy Awards

Dog movies don’t have a huge presence at the Oscars, but we’ve dug into the research to see how they’ve historically fared.

The Oscars – technically known as the Academy Awards – are some of the biggest film awards of the year. Dog movies don’t really have the best track record with them, either. But here at Dog O’Day we’ve dug into the files to track down the performances of canine content throughout Oscars history. As far as we can tell, we think we tracked everything down.

First, it should be remembered that we’re pretty generous with our definition of what a “dog movie” is: it must A: be about dogs (or other canines), B: have a dog with a significant amount of screen time, or C: have a dog make a significant impact on the plot.

That means that Legally Blonde would count, thanks to Reese Witherspoon’s character’s Elle’s Chihuahua Bruiser appearing in most scenes, and Keanu Reeves’ John Wick trilogy counts because the plots revolve around dogs to some extent. Coyote Ugly wouldn’t, since it’s the name of a bar, and there are no canines in that movie.

Because of a movie executive bias which could be summarized as “not enough animated pictures are made regularly,” many of the animated classics like 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, 1982’s The Fox and the Hound or 1989’s All Dogs Go to Heaven are not listed due to not being nominated for anything.