Sheldon Lettich got his first Belgian Malinois by accident.
The LA-based screenwriter had just put down a pet when he and his wife went to the pound to look for a new companion. “We like big dogs,” Lettich, 64, says. “We wanted something like a German shepherd.”
As luck would have it, the shelter had a litter of what looked like four German shepherd puppies. Lettich and his wife took two, and named the pair Tina and Charlie.
But as the pups grew, Lettich realized they didn’t look like other German shepherds in the neighborhood. Months later, he found out why.
“I was reading an article about the bomb-sniffing dogs at LAX, and there’s a photo of a dog accompanying it that looked exactly like my dogs. The article
stated it was a Belgian Malinois, and I thought, ‘What the hell? What’s this?’ ”
Lettich fell in love with the breed. “They’re a bit of a handful, especially when they’re puppies,” he says. “But once they bond with you, they’re very loving pets.”
Fifteen years later, his Belgian Malinois inspired Lettich to write a script starring a dog of the same breed. “Max,” a family flick about a war dog relocated from Afghanistan to Texas to live with his handler’s family after his death, arrives in theaters Friday.
The military and police switched to the Belgian Malinois several years back, finding them better suited for the work than German shepherds, explains Lettich, who adopted a third Belgian Malinois, Zoe, a few years ago, after Tina and Charlie had passed away.
“They’re a little bit smaller, lighter, more agile; they can be very aggressive, they live a little bit longer, and they don’t have hip-dysplasia problems as much as German shepherds do.”
In the film, Max — who suffers from PTSD following the death of his handler, Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell, best known as Firestorm on “The Flash”) — moves to Texas to live with the Wincott family and adapt to “civilian” life. Kyle’s younger brother, Justin (Josh Wiggins), is put in charge of the unruly canine.
