The dog that plays the adult version of Bella is named Shelby the Dog and she was a rescue dog. She was found living in a junkyard in Tennessee.
In 2020 Denver voters voted to repeal the pit bull ban in the city of Denver.
The filmmakers were intent on choosing a rescue dog to star in the survival tale adaptation of the novel by W. Bruce Cameron, the same author who wrote the book adapted for Mes vies de chien (2017). The pooch also had to be a pit bull mix, as in the book. The Internet search ended at a Tennessee no-kill shelter, which had rescued Shelby the Dog from a squalid life in a nearby landfill. Although Shelby is not a pit bull mix, she was the only rescue dog they found that could be trained in time for the film schedule.
The coyotes in this film are really coywolves which are a wolf-coyote hybrid. Regular wolves that inhabit northwestern American states (including Alaska), northern portions of the Great Lakes region and Canada are gray/grey and white while coyotes have brown, tan, gray/grey and white fur. Both canid species are rarely black. Coyotes that are partially wolves inhabit northeastern American states and eastern Canada.
The trailer has been widely criticised, as it clearly shows the entire film's highlights, including the ending.