American Humane Association Film & Television Unit monitored a good portion of this film. However, the film has earned a Monitored-Unacceptable rating due to the fact that our Certified Animal Safety Representative discovered the kitten they were using was underage, per our Guidelines For The Safe Use of Animals In Filmed Media. Since, the production never notified us as to which days they were going to use the kitten. American Humane was not able to enforce our Guidelines for the safe handling of the kitten. This lack of notification, coupled with the unintentional negligence in using a kitten that was under eight weeks of age, led to our decision to rate the film Monitored-Unacceptable.

All grounds were inspected for hazards and sets were closed off and secured. Cast and crew members were introduced to the animals and instructed on their proper handling.

Throughout the film, the main character has a dog seen performing such mild action as sitting/standing/lying, tied to a post, and walking/running on or off leash. For all of these scenes, trainers used hand signals and verbal commands to cue the mild action, which the trained dog was accustomed to performing.

However, in the scene where the dog lays dead on a rock with an arrow through its body and actor pulls the arrow out, production used a stuffed dog as well as the real dog. In the shot where the dog has the arrow through its body, they used a stuffed dog. In order to get a few shots of the real dog (after the actor presumably pulled the arrow out – which was never shown on camera), the trainer laid the dog down on the rock and the props department placed fake blood on dog's front shoulder. The trainer laid down next to the dog to encourage him to stay down, appearing "dead."

American Humane Association did not monitor a scene involving deer standing in the distance and a scene where an actor takes a turtle from the lake and writes on the underside of its shell with pen.

However, in the scene where the dog lays dead on a rock with an arrow through its body and actor pulls the arrow out, production used a stuffed dog as well as the real dog. In the shot where the dog has the arrow through its body, they used a stuffed dog. In order to get a few shots of the real dog (after the actor presumably pulled the arrow out – which was never shown on camera), the trainer laid the dog down on the rock and the props department placed fake blood on dog’s front shoulder. The trainer laid down next to the dog to encourage him to stay down, appearing “dead.”

American Humane Association did not monitor a scene involving deer standing in the distance and a scene where an actor takes a turtle from the lake and writes on the underside of its shell with pen.