Rin Tin Tin never won the first Best Actor Oscar. The story that he did, and that the Academy quietly handed the trophy to a human instead, has been repeated for ninety years. It was on this page too, until we checked. Bruce Davis, who ran the Academy for two decades, went and read the 1928 ballots. They were signed, not secret. Exactly one names a dog, and it belongs to Jack Warner, who was making a joke about his own studio’s biggest star.
That is what most dog movie lists are: copies of copies. We have been reviewing dog films at Dog with Blog since 2009, and almost every entry below links to a full review.
Dogs have long been our trusted comrades and that fine bridge from childhood to adolescence. The superheroes sans capes that they are inspire us every day as guide dogs, therapy dogs and anti-terror dogs.
Being that ingrained in popular culture, it comes as no surprise that the heroics of dogs inspire our art, whether that is music, festivals or books. From the silent era to the age of SFX, when it comes to screen presence, no cine star comes within the breathing space of the canine kind.
Each film here tells you four things: the year, whether the story is actually true, whether you can legally stream it in India right now, and whether the dog dies. That last one is not a spoiler to hunt for on a forum at 11pm. It is the first thing most people want to know and the last thing anyone bothers to write down.
Jump to
So hold on to that popcorn bowl and hug your dog.
Five dog movies to start with
If you want one evening and one good decision, take one of these.
- 777 Charlie (2022) if you want the one that was made here. A Kannada film that won a National Film Award and then, despite itself, sent half of Bengaluru looking for a Labrador to buy. On Prime Video and JioHotstar. The dog dies.
- Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009) if you have somehow never seen it. Free with ads on JioHotstar. The dog dies, at the end, of old age, and you will know it is coming for ninety minutes.
- Togo (2019) if you want the true version of a story you already think you know. No Indian stream, which is a shame, because it is the best of the lot.
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) if there are children in the room or you have had a hard week. On Netflix India. Nobody dies. Gromit does not even speak and still out-acts most humans.
- Good Boy (2025) if you want something you have not seen before. A haunted-house film shot entirely from the dog’s eye level, starring the director’s own dog. On Lionsgate Play. The dog lives.
Dog movies based on true stories
This is the section this page was originally built around, and it is still the part worth reading first. A real dog behind a film changes how you watch it. These are ordered by how strongly we would recommend them, not by year.
Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009)
An Akita waits at Shibuya Station for his professor to come home from work. The professor died at his desk on 21 May 1925. Hachiko kept going back for nine years and nine months, until his own death on 8 March 1935.
The detail that guts you is not the waiting. Hachiko had lived with Hidesaburo Ueno for about sixteen months. He spent nearly seven times longer waiting for the man than he ever spent with him. A 2011 necropsy found terminal cancer and a filarial infection, and settled a long-running rumour by confirming the four yakitori skewers in his stomach had not killed him.
The Richard Gere version relocates everything to Rhode Island, which purists dislike and which does not matter. The dog is the film. We have also written about the statue of Hachiko finally reunited with Ueno.
True story: yes. Dog dies: yes Watch in India: JioHotstar (free with ads), Prime Video, or rent on Amazon.Togo (2019)
In January 1925 a diphtheria outbreak hit Nome, Alaska. The serum was railed from Anchorage to Nenana, and from there twenty-odd mushers and around 150 dogs relayed it 674 miles across the ice to Nome.
Balto ran the last 53 miles into town and got a statue in Central Park. Togo, aged twelve, ran roughly 260 miles of it, including the crossing of the Norton Sound sea ice in a storm, which was the leg that could actually have killed everyone. He got a Disney film ninety-four years late.
Willem Dafoe plays Leonhard Seppala. It is the best dog film of the last decade and it is the one film on this list we cannot tell you how to watch legally in India.
True story: yes. Dog dies: yes Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).777 Charlie (2022)
Not a true story, and we are putting it here anyway because of what it did in the real world. A lonely man in Mysuru is landed with a Labrador he does not want. Kannada, released in five languages, and it won Best Feature Film in Kannada at the 69th National Film Awards. Charlie was played by four dogs at different ages under trainer Pramod B.C.
Here is the part nobody puts in the reviews. The film is an argument for taking in the dog nobody wanted, and what actually followed its release was a run on Labrador puppies. Breeders and pet shops in Bengaluru reported a jump in demand, particularly for females. PETA India had to put out a public appeal asking fans not to buy from breeders, and there were reports of owners abandoning other breeds to make room. The Karnataka government later announced a stray-dog adoption programme partly on the back of the film’s profile.
It is the oldest pattern in the business. Lassie Come Home did it to collies in 1943, 101 Dalmatians did it to dalmatians, and Game of Thrones did it to huskies, and every time the shelters absorbed the fallout eighteen months later. A film can make people love a dog and still send them to the wrong place to get one. Read the full review before you decide whether you are in the right frame of mind for it.
True story: no. Dog dies: yes Watch in India: Prime Video, JioHotstar, Apple TV.Arthur the King (2024)
Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord fed a meatball to a stray at a checkpoint in Ecuador in 2014. The dog followed his team for the rest of the race, through jungle and open water, and went home to Sweden with him.
The film moves the race to the Dominican Republic and renames Lindnord as Michael Light for Mark Wahlberg, which is the sort of thing films do. The bones of it are true, including the vet giving Arthur almost no chance against his infected wounds.
True story: yes, from Lindnord’s own book. Dog dies: no. Watch in India: Lionsgate Play, or rent on Amazon.Red Dog (2011)
A Kelpie cross spent the 1970s hitching rides on buses and ore trucks across the Pilbara in Western Australia, apparently looking for a man who was not coming back. He was known as Bluey, Tally Ho and the Dog of the Northwest before Red Dog stuck.
He died on 21 November 1979, believed to have been deliberately poisoned with strychnine, and is buried in an unmarked grave near Roebourne. There is a bronze statue of him at Dampier. The film took more than AUD 21 million in Australia, the highest-grossing Australian film of that year, and won the AACTA for Best Film. Our review is here.
True story: yes, via Louis de Bernieres’ 2002 novel. Dog dies: yes. Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).Dog Gone (2023)
Fielding Marshall’s golden retriever Gonker goes missing on the Appalachian Trail. Gonker has Addison’s disease and roughly twenty days before he needs another injection, so a father and son who barely speak spend three weeks driving fire roads shouting a dog’s name.
Rob Lowe plays the father. It is a small, unfussy film and the search is real, taken from Pauls Toutonghi’s book.
True story: yes. Dog dies: no. Watch in India: Netflix.Eight Below (2006)
In February 1958 a Japanese research team evacuated Showa Station ahead of the winter and left fifteen sled dogs chained outside, expecting a relief party that never came. When the next expedition arrived eleven months later, seven had died on their chains, six had broken free and were never found, and two brothers, Taro and Jiro, were alive.
The main guide is played by the late Paul Walker, who spends the film worrying about the dogs he left behind and trying every way he can to get back to them.
Eight Below is the American remake, with eight dogs instead of fifteen and six survivors instead of two, which is a kinder arithmetic than the real one. If you want the events themselves, the 1983 Japanese film Nankyoku Monogatari follows them properly. Either way it leaves you with the same question: what do we owe the animals who gave an expedition their absolute all?
Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog (2004)
The ultimate homage to the loyalty and service of guide dogs. A Labrador is picked out of a litter, trained, and paired with a blind man who does not want him. The man resents needing a dog at all, which is the honest bit most guide-dog films skip.
Released in Japan in March 2004, directed by Yoichi Sai, and screened at Toronto that September. It covers Quill’s entire twelve years. A must watch.
Marley & Me (2008)
John Grogan’s memoir about a Labrador who ate drywall, failed obedience school and was described by his own owner as the world’s worst dog. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.
It is a comedy for about ninety minutes and then it is not. The euthanasia scene is on screen and the family is in the room, which is why people who have lost a dog recently should skip this one and come back in a year.
Rescued by Ruby (2022)
A shelter dog returned five times by five different families, written off as unmanageable, ends up with a Rhode Island state trooper who cannot get into the K-9 unit. In 2017 a teenager went missing for more than thirty-six hours, and Ruby found him after a six-hour search.
Then the coincidence that makes the story. The boy’s mother, Patricia Inman, was the RISPCA volunteer who had fostered Ruby every time she was returned, and who had argued against putting her down. Ruby was named American Humane Search and Rescue Dog of the Year in 2018.
The film is gentler than that summary deserves. Worth watching for the argument it makes without stating it: the dog nobody could handle was not a bad dog, she was a bored one.
True story: yes. Dog dies: no. Watch in India: Netflix.My Dog Skip (2000)
Willie Morris’s memoir of growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1942 with a Jack Russell terrier who did the work of making a friendless boy into a person. Frankie Muniz, Luke Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Diane Lane, narrated by Harry Connick Jr.
True story: yes. Dog dies: yes Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).Greyfriars Bobby (1961)
A Skye terrier slept on his owner’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh for years. An 1867 byelaw required every dog to be licensed at seven shillings or destroyed, and Bobby had no owner to pay it.
The Lord Provost, William Chambers, paid the licence himself and gave him an inscribed brass collar. It is in the Museum of Edinburgh, and it reads “Greyfriars Bobby from the Lord Provost 1867 licensed”. We have the longer story here.
True story: yes, though historians have questioned parts of the Victorian legend. Dog dies: no Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).Balto (1995)
The animated one, and the reason most people have the 1925 serum run backwards. Balto did lead the final team into Nome through a blizzard at minus 23 Fahrenheit, arriving on Front Street at 5:30am on 2 February with all 300,000 units of antitoxin intact. Gunnar Kaasen was driving, and pushed on the last 25 miles himself after finding the next musher asleep.
The film then makes Balto a half-wolf outcast, which is invention. See Togo above for the dog who ran five times further.
Finding Rin Tin Tin (2007)
Corporal Lee Duncan found a bombed German war-dog kennel at Flirey in France on 15 September 1918, with a starving mother and five puppies inside. He kept two. One of them made 27 films, sold a great many German Shepherd puppies to American families, and kept Warner Bros solvent through the 1920s.
The 2007 film is a loose dramatisation with three puppies instead of five and an invented German prisoner. Watch it for the story, not for the accuracy, and see the top of this page for the Oscar myth. The Academy’s revenge came later anyway, when it was flooded with emails demanding a nomination for Uggie in The Artist.
True story: the dog, yes. The film, loosely. Dog dies: no. Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).Air Bud (1997)
The film is invented. The dog was not. Kevin DiCicco found a stray golden retriever near his cabin in the Sierra Nevada in 1989 and taught him basketball, baseball, football, soccer and hockey. That dog got a film, five sequels and a franchise.
“I rescued him from abandonment in the mountains, but Buddy also rescued me, giving my life purpose, direction, and a profound sense of relationship I had been missing. Our bond saved us both and together we forged a path from that dirt trail near the old mine shaft to the international sensation on the silver screen.”
Kevin DiCicco
Buddy died of synovial cell sarcoma on 10 February 1998, a few months after the film came out. DiCicco, who spent years disputing his share of the profits and later wrote a book called Go Buddy!, died in San Diego on 21 March 2026, aged 63.
True story: the dog only. Dog dies: no Watch in India: no legal option found (August 2026).Indian dog movies
Every big dog-movie list in English has the same hole in it. Rotten Tomatoes lists sixty-odd films and not one is Indian. Rolling Stone ranks fifteen movie dogs, all Anglophone. Even Heads Up For Tails, an Indian pet brand writing for Indian readers, published twenty best dog movies without a single Indian title on the list.
There is a real canon here. Start with these, then read our fuller guide to Bollywood and Indian dog movies, which runs to nineteen films.
- 777 Charlie (2022, Kannada). Covered above. The most consequential Indian dog film ever made.
- Mughizh (2021, Tamil). Sixty-two minutes, produced by and starring Vijay Sethupathi, with his daughter Shreeja making her debut. A small, unhurried film about a child and a dog. On Netflix.
- Ohh My Dog (2026, Hindi). The newest, and the only one here that handed its lead roles to two real Indian street dogs rather than an imported breed. Flawed and far too long, and still the most interesting thing Hindi cinema has done with a dog. In cinemas.
- Valatty (2023, Malayalam). Every principal character is a dog, roughly ten of them, voiced by human actors. There is nothing else like it in Indian cinema. On JioHotstar.
- Oh My Dog (2022, Tamil). A boy raises a blind puppy named Simba. Produced by Suriya and Jyothika, and Arun Vijay’s son Arnav’s debut. Free with ads on MX Player.
- Puppy (2025, Kannada). A family migrates from north Karnataka to Bengaluru and their son attaches himself to a lost puppy belonging to a rich household. Quiet, class-conscious, on Prime Video.
- Teri Meherbaniyan (1985, Hindi). Moti watches his master murdered and then kills all three men responsible. Absurd, and it was a hit, and Indian dog cinema starts here whether we like it or not. On Zee5.
Two more that are not dog films but have the best dog in the frame. Tuffy in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) resolves the entire third act by delivering a letter to the wrong person. He was an Indian Spitz called Redo, not the Pomeranian half the internet claims. Madhuri Dixit adopted him after the shoot and he died in 2000, aged twelve. And Karuppi, killed in the opening minutes of Pariyerum Perumal (2018), is the image the rest of that film is built on. Mari Selvaraj has said outright that the dog is a metaphor.
The fiction canon
No real dog behind these. They are on the list because they are good films.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Wes Anderson’s stop-motion about a Japanese city that exiles its dogs to a garbage island. The only major art-house film built entirely around dog protagonists, and the most beautiful thing on this page. Bleak in places. Our review goes into the cultural-appropriation argument it picked up.
The Danish Girl (2015)
Not a dog film by plot, a quiet human drama about Lili Elbe’s gender reassignment surgery, told with the family dog Havappe as a silent witness in nearly every scene. Worth including for how it uses an animal presence to signal what the humans can’t say out loud. Our review goes into the real history behind the film.
Umberto D. (1952)
The prestige pick, and the one nobody puts on these lists. An old pensioner in post-war Rome cannot pay his rent and cannot bear to give up his dog Flike. De Sica made it about the dog on purpose: everything the man cannot say about his own worth gets said through what he will and will not do for that animal. If you only watch one film here that is genuinely great cinema, this is it.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
Gromit has no mouth and no dialogue and gives the best silent-comedy performance available in any medium. On Netflix India, safe for everyone in the room, and it holds a 100% Tomatometer.
Old Yeller (1957)
The film every later dog tragedy is copying. A Texas family’s stray defends them, contracts rabies, and a boy has to shoot his own dog. The killing happens off screen and it still ruined a generation. Not currently streamable in India.
Best in Show (2000)
Christopher Guest’s mockumentary about a dog show, which is really about dog people, which is to say about us. The only genuinely funny film on this list. Rent it on Amazon.
White God (2014)
Two hundred and fifty shelter dogs, no CGI, and a city’s abandoned mongrels turning on the people who dumped them. Kornel Mundruczo shot it with rescue dogs who were all rehomed afterwards. It is the angriest film about abandonment ever made and it is genuinely hard to watch. On MUBI. Read the review first.
Lassie Come Home (1943) and Lady and the Tramp (1955)
The two foundations. Lassie is fiction, from Eric Knight’s novel, despite decades of people assuming otherwise. Lady and the Tramp is the best pedigree-versus-street-dog story Disney ever told, which lands differently if you have spent any time around Indian indies. Lady and the Tramp is on JioHotstar. Lassie Come Home is not available here.
Bolt (2008) and 101 Dalmatians (1961)
The two Disney entries that hold up. Bolt is about a dog who believes his own publicity, and is smarter than it needed to be. Both on JioHotstar. Nobody dies in either.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Not a dog film. But Snoop, played by a border collie named Messi who won the Palm Dog at Cannes, is the only witness to what happened, and the film’s most disturbing scene is his. Worth knowing about if you follow the Palm Dog award.
John Wick (2014)
The whole franchise exists because somebody killed a beagle puppy in the first fifteen minutes. Daisy was a gift from Wick’s dying wife. The killing is off screen and audible, which is worse. Every dog in every sequel survives. On Lionsgate Play. Our review is here.
Documentaries
- Stray (2020). Elizabeth Lo followed Istanbul’s street dogs at their own eye level. Turkey made it illegal to cull or capture stray dogs, so the city is full of animals who have never had a reason to be afraid of a person, and it shows in how they move. If you work with Indian street dogs, this is the one to watch.
- Pick of the Litter (2018). Five guide-dog puppies from birth to graduation, and most of them fail. A 97% Tomatometer, higher than any fiction film on this page.
- Heart of a Dog (2015). Laurie Anderson on her rat terrier Lolabelle, grief, and the Tibetan bardo. Closer to an essay than a film.
- Dogs (2018, Netflix). Six episodes, six countries, on what people will do to stay with their dogs. The Syria episode is the one you will remember.
Every dog film we have reviewed
Looking for more? The films above are the ones we would put in front of someone first. The review shelf runs deeper than that. Here is the rest of it, grouped by what you are in the mood for.
More true stories and dramas
- A Dog’s Purpose, the reincarnation tearjerker, reviewed honestly
- Truman, a Spanish film about friendship and who takes the dog when you are gone
- My Life as a Dog, the Swedish classic, seen through a boy’s eyes
- DogMan, Luc Besson at his most gothic
- The Friend, Naomi Watts inherits a Great Dane named Apollo
- Beginners, the Jack Russell who seems to understand everything
Dogs in genre films
- Finch, Tom Hanks builds a robot so somebody will look after his dog
- Prey, the Predator prequel with a very good Carolina dog
- Good Boy, horror shot at dog height
Lists and culture
- 19 Bollywood and Indian dog movies
- Animated films about love and loss
- Best movies for animal lovers
- Every Palm Dog winner at Cannes
- Books written from a dog’s point of view
- The Pink Floyd song about a dog
Dogs earn these stories off screen too, as working and guide dogs, in courtrooms, and alongside bomb-disposal units.
Does the dog die? Every film on this list
The single most searched question about dog films, and none of the big lists answer it. The verdict is in plain sight, because that is what you came for. How it happens is blurred out so the ending is not spoiled for you. Hover on a desktop, or tap on a phone, to reveal it.
| Film | Does the dog die? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Hachi: A Dog’s Tale | Yes | |
| Togo | Yes | |
| 777 Charlie | Yes | |
| Marley & Me | Yes | |
| Old Yeller | Yes | |
| My Dog Skip | Yes | |
| Red Dog | Yes | |
| Quill | Yes | |
| Eight Below | Two of eight | |
| A Dog’s Purpose | Yes, four times | |
| John Wick | Yes, Daisy | |
| Arthur the King | No | |
| Dog Gone | No | |
| Rescued by Ruby | No | |
| Balto | No | |
| Air Bud | No | |
| Greyfriars Bobby | No | |
| Finding Rin Tin Tin | No | |
| Bolt | No | |
| 101 Dalmatians | No | |
| Lady and the Tramp | No | |
| Wallace & Gromit | No | |
| Best in Show | No | |
| Isle of Dogs | No principal dog | |
| Homeward Bound | No | |
| Good Boy | No | |
| Finch | No | |
| The Friend | No | |
| White God | Hagen lives | |
| Mughizh | No | |
| Ohh My Dog (2026) | No | Neither lead dies. Their mother Senapati is already dead at the opening funeral |
| Umberto D. | No |
Three of these are worth separating out.
Where to watch dog movies in India
Checked against JustWatch India in August 2026. This changes, so treat it as a starting point rather than gospel.
| Film | Where to watch in India |
|---|---|
| Hachi: A Dog’s Tale | JioHotstar (free with ads), Prime Video, Amazon rent |
| 777 Charlie | Prime Video, JioHotstar, Apple TV |
| Mughizh | Netflix |
| Ohh My Dog (2026) | In cinemas (August 2026). No OTT date announced |
| Dog Gone | Netflix |
| Rescued by Ruby | Netflix |
| Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl | Netflix |
| Valatty | JioHotstar |
| Bolt, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp | JioHotstar |
| Puppy (2025) | Prime Video |
| Oh My Dog | MX Player (free with ads), ManoramaMax |
| Teri Meherbaniyan | Zee5 |
| Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! | Prime Video, JioHotstar, Zee5 and others |
| Pariyerum Perumal | Prime Video |
| John Wick | Lionsgate Play, or rent from Rs 50 |
| Arthur the King | Lionsgate Play, Amazon rent |
| Good Boy | Lionsgate Play, Apple TV |
| Finch | Apple TV+ |
| The Friend | JioHotstar |
| White God | MUBI |
| Best in Show, Balto, A Dog’s Way Home | Rent only, on Amazon or Apple TV |
Not legally available in India as of August 2026: Togo, Marley & Me, Old Yeller, Lassie Come Home, Homeward Bound, Isle of Dogs, Umberto D., Red Dog, Quill, Greyfriars Bobby, My Dog Skip, Finding Rin Tin Tin, Air Bud, The Art of Racing in the Rain. That is fourteen films, including two of the five best on this page. Nobody else tells you this, which is why half of every dog movie list you read is decoration.
Questions people actually ask
What is the best dog movie based on a true story?
Togo (2019). It corrects a century-old misattribution, Willem Dafoe is excellent, and the dog it is about ran roughly 260 miles of the 1925 Nome serum run against Balto’s 53. If you need something you can actually stream in India, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale is free with ads on JioHotstar.
What is the best Indian dog movie?
777 Charlie (2022), and it is not close. It won Best Feature Film in Kannada at the 69th National Film Awards and released in five languages. Mughizh is the better small film if you have an hour rather than an evening, and Valatty is the strangest and most original.
Which dog movies do not have a sad ending?
Arthur the King, Dog Gone, Rescued by Ruby, Bolt, Balto, Best in Show, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp, Homeward Bound and any Wallace & Gromit. Air Bud too, though the real Buddy died of cancer a few months after it came out.
Is 777 Charlie based on a true story?
No, the story is invented. What was real was the aftermath, and it did not go the way the film intended. Pet shops and breeders in Bengaluru reported a jump in demand for Labrador puppies, PETA India issued a public appeal asking people to adopt rather than buy, and there were reports of other breeds being abandoned. If the film moved you, the honest response is a shelter visit, not a breeder.
Did Rin Tin Tin really win the first Best Actor Oscar?
No. Bruce Davis, the Academy’s executive director for over twenty years, read the 1928 ballots at the Margaret Herrick Library. They were signed rather than secret in that first year. One ballot names Rin Tin Tin, and it is Jack Warner’s, entered as a joke about his own studio’s biggest earner. Emil Jannings won. The myth traces back to a mocking letter from Darryl Zanuck and was cemented when Susan Orlean’s 2011 biography repeated it as fact.
One thing before you press play. Every film on this page is a story about a dog somebody chose to keep. If watching it leaves you wanting one of your own, there are indies and rescues waiting in your city right now.
Know a dog film we have missed, particularly an Indian one? Tell us and we will watch it.
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Thanks for this! Also, remember that great classic Lassie Come Home … never want to see it again, it made me cry so much, but beautiful.
Sorry no, not sure Lassie was real. But Jock of the Bushveld was.
Rightly said! 🙂 I grew up thinking Lassie to be real, a totem from my childhood. Thanks for recommending Jock, will check it! 🙂
Try watching Where the Red Fern Grows. When Old dan dies, Little Ann soon follows.
I’ve watched Where the Red Fern Grows it is definitely a tear-jerker
Not about a real dog, but one of the BEST book-to-movie adaptations ever is “The Art of Racing in the Rain”. Tearjerker for sure, but it was a fantastic book and the movie did it justice.
Togo, the longest run in serum race 1925.