Picture Credit: Netflix
Adapted from the novel by her husband, W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog’s Perfect Christmas introduces a family already carrying more than one problem into the holidays. Sander is still consumed by grief two years after losing his wife, Barbara; his granddaughter Ello is struggling at school; and Hunter and Juliana’s marriage has reached a difficult point. Then Juliana becomes seriously ill, leaving the rest of the family to hold things together while she fights for her life. Along the way, Winstead, the family’s longtime Basset Hound, and Ruby, an abandoned Corgi puppy Ello brings home, become an important part of pulling a very divided pack back together.
I spoke with Michon about bringing Cameron’s novel to the screen and some of the choices that changed in the process, including making Winstead more active in Sander’s story and adding the red cardinal connected to Barbara. We also talked about Dennis Quaid and Brooke Lena Johnson’s relationship at the heart of the film, the personal connection between Winstead and Michon’s late dog Tucker, and what actually happens when you decide to put a Basset Hound in a movie.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
The film brings together grief, humor, romance, and different generations. How did you balance those deeper themes with the warmth of a Christmas movie?
Cathryn Michon: When I think of Christmas movies, my favorite Christmas movie of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life. There are dark themes in that. Jimmy is thinking of killing himself, he’s got money problems, and things happen at Christmas to people who are sad.
I think the stories we love most are ones like A Dog’s Perfect Christmas, where you come out at the end of it with the happiest ending ever. People find a way to work through their challenges, and they come together.
In this case, they come together as a family, very much prompted by the actions of Winstead, the old Basset, and then the arrival of this beam of pure joy and light, which is Ruby, the Corgi puppy.
Those two dogs really do help refocus all the people on what’s really important, which is family and love and being there for each other. I think that’s the theme of this movie, and those are my favorite kind of movies.
A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. (L to R) Ruby and Brooke Lena Johnson as Ello in A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2026.
The film has many storylines, but every relationship and character gets time to develop. How did you make room for everyone?
Well, that’s filmmaking, isn’t it? In the process of shooting and then editing a film, you try to winnow things down to the essence of each storyline.
Fortunately, I had the novel. A Dog’s Perfect Christmas was already a great place to start because it’s a beautiful bestselling book.
And then I had brilliant actors. Dennis Quaid starts off the show almost suicidally depressed, and Dennis can give you that without saying a word. When you have great actors like Mary Steenburgen, Milo Ventimiglia, Jennifer Tilly, Marissa Jaret Winokur and Brooke Lena Johnson, all of them, you can tell things in a shorthand way that allows everything to develop.
I especially loved the relationship between Sander and Ello. What did Dennis Quaid and Brooke Lena Johnson bring to that relationship?
They’re both wonderful actors. I have worked with Dennis before because, of course, he starred in A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey, which are also from novels that my husband wrote, and we were the screenwriters on those films.
But as the director on this film, I feel like Dennis did some of the deepest, most beautiful work I’ve ever seen him do on film with this character.
And then Brooke is a new face, but a beautifully trained actress, singer, ice skater of Olympic-level proportions. I mean, she’s the multi-talented girl of all time.
They really connected as actors. I feel like they’re the two-hander of this story, and then everything else radiates outward from that.
In the novel, Sander remembers Barbara telling him to find love again while he’s holding her urn. In the movie, we instead have him find her note inside your book, I’m Still Here. How did you come up with that change, and what did using your own book in those scenes mean to you?
Oh, it meant the world to me, but the reason it happened was sort of an accident.
When you work with dogs in a film, they can do what they do. My original idea had been that the book would be A Dog’s Purpose. We changed it to a book because we wanted it to be something active for the dog to do instead of Sander just communing with his wife’s urn.
The book was going to be A Dog’s Purpose, but my sweet little Bassets couldn’t get their mouths around A Dog’s Purpose, which is a thicker book.
My book, I’m Still Here: A Dog’s Purpose Forever, is also told from the point of view of a dog, but this time it’s an angel dog letting people know that they’re still here. Since it happens on the last day of her life, a lot of people do read that book when they personally are in the process of passing over, so it seemed like a good fit.
But the dog on the cover of that book is my dog, Tucker, so it’s, of course, extremely meaningful to me. He was alive when we wrote it, and now he’s an angel dog.
A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. (L to R) Milo Ventimiglia as Hunter, Kathleen Rose Perkins as Juliana, Ethan Loomis as Sean, Director Cathryn Michon, Brooke Lena Johnson as Ello, Mary Steenburgen as Claire and Dennis Quaid as Sander in A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2026.
How did the idea of the cardinal come into the story? I don’t remember that being in the book.
No. I love this. You read the book and you saw my movie. You’re my new favorite.
That motif is not in the book, but again, it was something that we thought would be more filmic. There are cultures all over the world that believe that the souls of those we love come to us on things with wings, and a cardinal is a very common type of bird that people believe carries the souls of their past loved ones. It’s beautiful.
In Northern Michigan in the winter, with snow, to see that red Northern Cardinal…
I love the idea that, like in A Dog’s Purpose, the dog has a spiritual secret. He knows that he keeps coming back, but nobody else knows that until the very end, when Dennis Quaid’s character figures it out.
In this movie, the dog is like, “Oh, that’s our bird. That’s Mom watching over us.” Nobody else gets it until Mary Steenburgen’s character sees the bird and wonders, because a red Northern Cardinal never comes out at night, “Why is that bird here?”
So yeah, that’s why that element came into the film.
The film is dedicated to your dog Tucker, who also inspired the angel dog in I’m Still Here: A Dog’s Purpose Forever. What would you like to tell us about Tucker, and did any of his personality find its way into the film?
Oh, he always finds his way. He was in A Dog’s Journey, and he was in another film I directed. He loved being on camera, and he loved being an actor.
But I think the way he finds his way into this one, other than the fact that the film is dedicated to him, is in the character of Winstead.
It very much informed how I worked with my dog team and how I wanted them to train that dog. Winstead is just laser-focused on Sander, Dennis Quaid’s character, and that was Tucker. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without him being there.
Winstead is the same, and I think a lot of our dogs are like that. I think it’s a beautiful bond that we have with them, and I really wanted that to be in this movie as well.
A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Ruby in A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2026
In the book, Winstead is a Wolfhound. Why did you choose a Basset Hound and a Corgi for the film? Did their size make them easier to work with, or was it more about their personalities?
They were not easier.
I’m seeing a lot of conversation among Basset Hound owners like, “How did they get a Basset to be in a movie? Did they use CG?” Because they’re very difficult to train. They are so scent-motivated. A chicken nugget two counties over will distract a Basset.
They are very easily distracted. They don’t have great eyesight. There are a lot of reasons why you wouldn’t put them in a movie, except they are the most loving, loyal, affectionate and, let’s just be honest, very beautiful dogs. All those folds and all those rumples, it’s just gorgeous on camera.
So I had to really convince the head of my dog team, Bonnie Judd: I know they’re difficult, but it will be worth it.
And then, as for the Corgi, they’re just the cutest puppies on Earth. My husband is the author of the novel, and it wasn’t a Corgi in the book, but he just kept sending me all these videos of Corgi puppies. I’m like, “All right, all right, we’ll get a Corgi.”
I think it’s important to note that, though they’re both purebred dogs, both dogs in the film are rescues. They get Winstead from a Basset Hound rescue, which shows you can rescue any kind of dog you want. You have to be more patient if you want a certain breed.
And then the Corgi is cruelly abandoned by someone, which is awful, and is found by Ello.
We’re animal advocates, and we always have messages about our opinions about animals in our movies. I just want people to know that whatever breed of dog you want, you can get one through rescue.
You’ve worked on stories about dogs before. What had you learned from those experiences that helped when you were directing the dogs yourself this time?
I had directed dogs before, but I think what I had learned being on the set of the other three movies was really helpful to me, especially from Gail Mancuso, who directed A Dog’s Journey and is such a brilliant director.
I got to know the dogs personally. Every time we would finish a take, I would be like, “Who’s my movie star? Who’s my movie star?” And I would scrunch their ears the way they liked it, and somebody from the dog team would give me a treat to give them.
So I learned that I didn’t want to be hands-off with the dogs. Quite the opposite.
And then with the Corgis, because I was sort of mourning my own dog at the time, and we believe in socializing these dogs to be on a set, I directed a lot of this movie with a Corgi puppy in my arms. They needed to get used to me and to all the banging and all the things that happen on a movie set.
Even when I was scouting for locations, I had that Basset puppy and I had those Corgi puppies, and we were socializing them. It’s a privilege to be able to direct animals in that hands-on way.
A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. (L to R) Lucia Morris as Brittne and Princess Davis as Suffea in A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2026.
Thomas Haden Church feels like the perfect voice for Winstead. He’s funny, warm, wise and completely believable. What made you choose him?
I have been a fan of Thomas’s for a long time, and now I consider him a friend. He’s such a great actor to work with, so inventive and responsive.
He’s an Oscar nominee, and he’s been in so many things, but he’s genuinely funny and he has a lot of heart. He also has a beautiful character in his voice and a little hint of the South.
Basset Hounds are very popular in the South of the United States, and so I love that he has that little trace of Texas in his voice. That was why he was my first choice for this part.
Your husband wrote the book, you wrote the screenplay together, and you also directed the film. How did you decide what to keep and what to change? Were there any changes that worked even better than you expected?
That’s being a screenwriter, adapting a book. You can never put the whole book in. You can do it in a series, but you can’t do it in a movie. You have to, as they say, kill your darlings.
We’ve done that with Bruce’s books on three other movies, so we’ve gotten used to that.
I’m really happy with how this one turned out, especially with the additional elements, like making the dog more active with the book and then the interaction with the cardinal and other things like that.
I feel like we made really good choices on this one.
By the end, the family has a very different idea of what a perfect Christmas is compared with the beginning. What do you hope people take from the film if they come back to it in the years ahead?
Oh, I love you for saying that. I hope it’s true.
As I said, I always had It’s a Wonderful Life in my mind, and I’ve watched that movie so many times.
To me, the message in this movie is very similar. It’s like, don’t get hung up on what you think is perfect, and don’t be in the moment with what’s happening, even if what’s happening is terrifying.
Gather your family, pull in and support each other. Christmas is a good reminder of what’s really important. Love, friendship, family—those are the things that matter.
I can never hear that message too much. It’s why I watch It’s a Wonderful Life every year, because it’s like hearing that any man who has friends is rich.
In this movie, any Christmas where you have the people you love is perfect. That’s what I want people to take away from this movie. It’s the people that make Christmas perfect, not the tinsel, not the presents, not the stuff.
A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Winstead in A Dog’s Perfect Christmas. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2026.
You mentioned how working with the dogs led to the change involving the book. Did one of the dogs ever do something unexpected that you ended up keeping in the film?
Oh, yes. I think my Basset is going to get nominated for a dog Oscar.
There was a scene we shot where the Corgi gets abandoned in a parking lot. It’s quite terrifying, and we see this scene twice in the movie. The second time you see it, the Basset is just totally freaked out and looks like she wants to get out of the car.
That actually happened because my darling Basset heard a train whistle. A train went by far away off set, but with their marvelous ears, the dog heard that and wanted to know what it was. She was excited. She wasn’t upset. She was just excited to figure out what that whistling sound was.
But we played that as though she’s desperate to get out of the car to go save the Corgi.
So that was a lucky filmmaking moment where something the Basset was excited about looks like something she’s terrified about.
