Animal magic

ONE of the biggest challenges Dave Sousa has undertaken has been training the owls in Harry Potter to drop their prey. Owls aren't usually known for dropping their lunch once they've got their beaks tightly clenched around it. But for the Harry Potter films, the script called for the birds to swoop in and drop the letters they were clutching in their beaks onto the long tables at the fictitious Hogwarts school.

Dave, 47, who also trained the rats in the series of films, says: "Everything was food to the owls so it was the hardest thing to teach them to drop it. It took us about two and a half to three months to figure it out and actually it was the smaller barn owls who were the really clever ones."

Animals have been a part of Dave's life for more than 25 years. He grew up in San Francisco and used to enjoy playing with Meccano and toy cars, like all the other boys his age. But then he got interested in snakes and other "pets".

"I was always the weird kid with the snakes and lizards," he says. "Basically, I knew from a very young age that I wanted to work with animals."

Dave worked at Marine World in California, helping out with the shows featuring lions, tigers and chimpanzees. He spent time at a rehabilitation centre, caring for sick and injured animals, before working for Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon, and later Universal Studios in Florida, doing bird and animal shows.

But it was his next job with Birds and Animals UK which put him in demand from film and theatre bosses. Now living near the Leavesden Studios in Watford, Hertfordshire, where the Harry Potter series was filmed, Dave's work regularly takes him across the world.

"I never thought I'd be doing something like this," he admits. "I grew up in a little suburb in San Francisco so I never thought I'd be travelling all over the world."

His first entertainment job was for the 1988 film Willow, starring Val Kilmer and a number of eagles who needed to be taught how to fly with miniature people on their backs. Later, he found himself training animals for such films as Dr Dolittle, 102 Dalmatians and Home Alone, where he trained the rats.

"Once you build up a rat's confidence they're unstoppable," he enthuses. "The rats in Home Alone had to live in a kid's camera case and there was one rat who quickly realised that if I loaded him from the top of the box, when he heard the buzzer he had to knock the door down, run out onto the table, stay on the mark for a second, run back, grab the tab and pull the door closed behind him."

Just describing what the rat has to do sounds complicated enough, let alone training one. Dave says any training begins very slowly and with small tasks first, such as getting the rat to react to the buzzer using food as "payment".

One of his challenges has included teaching a greenwing macaw to take on the characteristics of a dog for one of the Ace Ventura films.

'He had to be a dog and ride on a dog's back, bounce up and down on him, sniff the ground and slide on his back. He was brilliant."

He says, however, that there is no way of teaching an animal if he doesn't want to do it. He recalls a particular wilful giraffe.

"It just ran away," he laughs. "We were filming the second Ace Ventura and it needed to stand by a tree and it just didn't want to do it. We had 600 acres and he just ran off into the distance. It was one of the most beautiful things I've seen."

For all the tenacity, dedication and huge amounts of patience needed for the job, Dave also comes across as being pretty laid back, the kind of person animals would be drawn to in a horse-whispery kind of way. He speaks in an American, West Coast accent, his hair lies in waves beyond his shoulders and it's clear he has an affinity for all the animals he trains.

Halfway through the interview, he takes a call from one of his colleagues, with whom he's working at Newcastle's Theatre Royal.

"Can you take the kids down," says Dave affectionately into his phone. "I won't be long."

The kids? The kids are the 40 Indian Runner ducks he has trained for the Kenneth Branagh-directed production Ducktastic at the Theatre Royal - his first foray into live theatre. Dave picked the ducks out when they were ducklings and they took 20 weeks to train, although there is only ever one star of the show on stage at the time, the character of Daphne.

The trick with most animals, he says, is to study their personalities and what they do naturally. With the ducks, it was the way they used their beaks. In one scene, Daphne is seen plucking several tissues out for an upset Sean Foley, co-writer of the play. The ducks were trained using a clicker. When it clicks they are rewarded with bits of corn.

"The hardest thing is to get them to go to a mark," says Dave. "Ducks are always looking for something else to do. But the key with any animal training is patience. Shouting, hitting, it never works. You need to understand the animal's body language and its natural behaviour."

There may be some who do not agree with the training of animals for films or theatre. But Dave answers: "I don't look at what I do as exploiting animals. The ducks were already going to be bred for other reasons. I've actually taken 40 of them and given them a life.

"When we use dogs and cats, we get them from animal shelters and they get the best food and care and then we find good homes for them afterwards."

The amount of work in the training is vast. In Newcastle, Dave stays behind with the actors after the show to work through any problems.

He admits the live aspect of theatre gave an added nerve-wracking dimension when he first watched his "kids" perform on stage. His hours are long and days off are often spent with the animals, but there's no other job he would rather do.

"I'd rather spend my time with animals than with people any day," he smiles.

* Ducktastic runs until Saturday. To book tickets contact the Theatre Royal Box Office on 0870 905 5060.