NEWS REAL\'Homeward Bow-wownd'\For trainer, it was more than the usual fur-flying tail of bickering\co-stars.

Byline: Janet Weeks

The latest Walt Disney Pictures release may look like a tender tale of friendship, but Hollywood wags say behind-the-scene fights between co-stars often degenerated to back-biting and barking.

Indeed, the challenge in making "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco" - a movie about two dogs and a cat - was getting actors of different breeds to get along, said animal trainer Mathilde De Cagny of Venice.

"We had to do a lot of training to put the dogs together," said De Cagny. "Once they were trained, it was fine. But at first, everybody was kept on leash because they wouldn't accept each other."

De Cagny trained two of the golden retrievers who portrayed Shadow, one of the film's three main characters (the others are Chance, an American bulldog, and Sassy, a Himalayan cat).

"Homeward Bound II" tells the story of the three animal buddies as they wander about the city by the bay in search of their owners. It is a sequel to 1993's "Homeward Bound," in which the trio trekked home through the wilderness. As in the first movie, Sally Field and Michael J. Fox provide the voices of Sassy and Chance. Ralph Waite takes over as Shadow from the late Don Ameche.

With its urban setting, "Homeward Bound II" plays like a message movie aimed at teaching audiences to adopt stray dogs and cats. And, accordingly, the two retrievers trained by De Cagny for the film came from an animal rescue program.

De Cagny said she received Clovis and Martel - the dogs' real names - three months before the start of filming, and endured many intensive training sessions to ready them for the movie. That proves, she said, that old dogs can learn new tricks.

"Getting them when they're older gives you the advantage of knowing what they're about," she said. Puppies, although cute, are thoroughly unpredictable, she added.

In one of the movie's trickiest scenes, Shadow must enter a vintage Victorian house engulfed in flames. For the stunt, De Cagny trained Clovis to slink low to the ground with thick smoke overhead.

She said she accomplished the stunt by exposing Clovis to smoke a little at a time.

"I tested the scene myself first, because I wouldn't put the dogs through something I wouldn't do. And he never backed away from it."

De Cagny also is the trainer of Moose, the wire-haired Jack Russell terrier who plays Eddie on "Frasier." Moose also came to her as an adult from a rescue group.

But working on the hit show is a completely different experience, she said.

"On 'Frasier,' I can't talk during taping. I can't be anywhere close to the dog. So it's really hard to get the right command."

The makers of "Homeward Bound II" taped the dialogue first and then added it to the film later.

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Photo "Homeward Bound II" characters Shadow, left, Chance and Sassy had trouble getting along on the set at first, but eventually proved that old dogs - and cats - can learn new tricks.