Animals in ‘Superman’ were trained by Greater Cincinnati woman

“Superman,” one of this year’s biggest blockbuster movies, has more than one Cincinnati tie. In addition to Union Terminal being used as the Hall of Justice, the headquarters for the superheroes, the film’s animal trainer, Megan-Kate Hoover, hails from Greater Cincinnati.

Although Superman’s cute sidekick dog, Krypto, was completely computer-generated imagery, the barking dog, turtles and squirrels featured in the film were all trained at Hoover’s Northern Kentucky home.

Hoover owns Pet Pawsible, a professional pet training service for the entertainment industry, which she runs from the basement of their home in Highland Heights.

Since entering the film industry, Hoover has worked on more than 20 movies, but “Superman” is the biggest one she’s worked on by far, she told The Enquirer.

Hoover’s love for animals dates back to when the Seattle native began volunteering at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, when she was 9 years old. At 15, she became the youngest licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Washington state and “volunteered everywhere she could,” Hoover said.

She loved working with exotic animals and helping their owners take better care of them.

“[I] loved working with them, loved fixing them, making them healthier, making them better,” she said. Even at a young age, she trained all types of animals, from tigers to wallabies, scrunch chinchillas and prairie dogs.

At 19, she was contracted to work in Thailand at a dolphin attraction facility that had just opened to educate workers, conduct studies on the wild dolphin populations and train the animals. She spent two years there before working at an elephant hospital in Northern Thailand for a few months.

When Hoover returned home, she planned to go to veterinary school, but she was sidetracked by Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition. This led her to “reevaluate everything,” she said. She ultimately decided that if she couldn’t fix animals physically, she’d do it emotionally and mentally.

Cincinnati Zoo sparked Hoover’s film industry journey

Hoover was living in Portland, Oregon, and in need of health insurance when she was turned down for a job at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. A few months later, though, the zoo called back.

She was hired by the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden in 2011 to raise and train two cougar cubs, brothers Joseph and Tecumseh, that the zoo had obtained from a rehab facility in Nebraska.

She was then offered a curatorial role, where she managed all of the zoo’s animal training. She was dubbed the Cincinnati Zoo’s own version of Dr. Dolittle, the fictional physician who can speak to animals. She did this for several years before her path crossed with the film industry. 

“A film emailed the zoo looking for an animal trainer for a movie, and so they forwarded that onto me because that was kind of my area,” Hoover said. “I was on my honeymoon, and by the time I got back, I had 10 days to find a dog and have it set ready.”

Hoover, who is married to former Cincinnati Reds pitcher J.J. Hoover, was candid about her first movie experience. She said she knew how to train animals, but she had no idea what she was getting into movie-wise.

“I didn’t know set etiquette. I knew nothing,” she said.

After that first movie, the film company kept calling, Hoover said. That’s when she realized she wouldn’t be able to juggle a full-time zoo position and working on films.

“With my husband’s job, at that point, he was playing for the Reds, and so with him playing and being gone so much, it actually made more sense for me to focus on film, and then in the downtime, I could go see him when he was traveling,” she said.

Where do you find movie-ready animals? Hoover says you don’t

Whenever a movie contacts Hoover, she first reads the script, then ventures out to find the “perfect” animals for the film.

“I basically go through the script, make recommendations and then usually go through rescues to find the animals that they need for the film,” she said. “I pull those animals, bring them into my home, train them … (and) take them all over the place.”

Where does she find all these movie star animals? Mostly rescue shelters.

“I have a few rescue shelters that I work with,” she told The Enquirer. “Actually, Columbus, Indiana, has a rescue that I work with 90 percent of the time and a shelter that I work with a ton, as well.”

She also works with rescues from Louisville to Cleveland. Whether she’s looking for cats, dogs, rabbits, chickens, or even insects, she knows where to find the best pets for the job.

“I have a whole list, depending on what (the movie) needs,” she said. “There’s just a million rescues that I work with that are local that are fantastic.”

Hoover is currently training Aella, a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois, borrowed from her Indiana-based owner for two different movies being filmed in Louisville.

Although she couldn’t reveal many details about the upcoming movies, Hoover said Aella would need to lay her head on a woman’s lap in one of the scenes. It’s a simple task, but it requires more training than you’d think.

“A lot of times, (animals) play minor parts and you don’t really think they have to be trained to do every little thing, even if it’s just a small part,” she explained. “Even directors will be like, ‘Well, the dog just has to be a dog.’ I’m like, ‘You don’t understand. It’s not going to be a dog how you want it to be a dog without being trained to be a dog!”

She trained a squirrel, turtles and two dogs for the blockbuster film ‘Superman’

Hoover said it took several months to train turtles, squirrels and two dogs to appear in “Superman.” The animal trainer told The Enquirer she began the training around November 2023, and filming starting in July 2024. She was on set for eight days.

“(The film crews) don’t even know quite what they need until it gets really close,” Hoover told The Enquirer. “I knew the dog had to bark for long periods of time, looking at a very specific spot, and no matter what was happening – except there was supposed to be chaos around it – just to bark.”

Hoover said she also knew Superman could be coming into frame at some point, but she didn’t know how it would happen.

“There’s the one scene where the monster is in Downtown Cleveland and the dog is barking at the monster and Superman saves the dog. That’s my dog, or rather, the one I provided for them,” she explained.

“I didn’t know if [Superman] was flying in or running in or what he was doing, so I had to get volunteers to help me run up to her and do the pose because I knew the [monster’s] foot was coming down, and that was like the main part of the scene.”

Hoover said the Community Animal Rescue Effort (CARE) in Columbus helped her find Trudy, the Jack Russel mix Superman rescued from Kaiju, a gigantic monster created by the megalomaniacal Lex Luthor. The pup was found at Maury County Animal Services in Tennessee and went by the name Sparrow before being picked up for the movie.

Trudy was adopted after filming by one of the set members and now lives in Nova Scotia and Santa Fe, New Mexico, depending on the season, Hoover told The Enquirer. Trudy’s understudy, Henry, whom Hoover believes is an old pug mix, was also adopted and now lives in Atlanta.

The turtles really didn’t have to be trained, Hoover said, “they just had to be there and be part of the scene.”

The animal trainer got the map turtles from the Herps Alive Foundation, a Cleveland-based non-profit reptile rescue and education organization.

Hoover’s turtles didn’t have a major role, but the reptile was a topic of controversy following the movie, with some moviegoers questioning if the scene was “necessary.” As citizens are forced to evacuate the fictional city of Metropolis, the camera slowly pans to an elderly woman carrying her pet turtles.

In a Threads post, “Superman” director James Gunn answered a fan who asked for the story behind the woman and her turtles, and why the camera stayed on her “for a beat longer than other rescues.”

“I thought it was touching an old woman, after a life of living and acquiring THINGS, when being restricted to only bringing one thing with her, she chose these tiny lives,” Gunn replied.

Hoover said the turtles were returned to Herps Alive Foundation after production.

Squirrels trained for ‘Superman’ were ‘pretty bratty,’ but became a fan-favorite

The squirrels she trained were a bit more of a handful.

“They were supposed to be eyes-closed bottle babies. When I got to (Atlanta), they were not. They were much older,” she explained. “At that point, I’d been waiting all this time for them to give birth and have these squirrels, and I don’t know what happened, but I had to take these squirrels.”

Hoover said that because of the squirrels’ ages, they didn’t bond with her the way they were supposed to.

“They were pretty bratty, to be honest,” she said.

In the movie, the squirrels were supposed to be able to sit on Hoover’s hand while outdoors and not tethered to anything, and stay there while Superman interacted with them.

“I got (the squirrels) to the point where they would stay on, but if anything popped or moved, or anything, they were gone, and then you couldn’t catch them either,” she told The Enquirer.

Instead, Hoover spoke with the film crew member, and they decided it’d be easier to put the squirrels in a glass aquarium, turn it upside down, add plexiglass with holes in the bottom to allow for air circulation, and train the animals to move throughout the enclosure.

“I had to find this other enclosure that they would leave from one enclosure into this thing and then go up into it, and they were trained to do all this, then go in there, and then we’d close them in and I could still feed them rewards while they were in there, but they had to be confident and comfortable in there to walk around downtown Cleveland,” she said.

But the squirrel scene was nearly axed from the film.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gunn revealed that he refused to listen to “Superman” test screening audiences who opposed the moment when David Corenswet’s Man of Steel stops to save a squirrel in the middle of a big battle. It’s a quick moment, but a monumental one that further exudes Superman’s empathy and kindness.

“James was like, ‘No, we’re having the squirrel scenes,'” Hoover said. She thought the scene was “really neat,” adding that she loved the way Superman was represented in the movie, especially during the squirrel scene (and not just because she trained the animal).

“To me, it made Superman even more Superman, right? He’s going to save everything, even the little squirrel,” she said.

Hoover also revealed another possible reason the scene was kept.

“James Gunn loved squirrels,” she said. “He and his wife were hand-feeding a squirrel that would come into their house, so he loved squirrels and he wanted to come hang out with the squirrels, so I knew that was really special to him.”

The furry critters now live happy lives at Parrot Hill Rescue in Cleveland.