It was crucial to Jason Reitman that many elements in the film be practically built, including the infamous 'Terror Dogs.' He told Playstation Blog, "We basically had a real Terror Dog on set that was operated by the greatest puppeteers alive. It's that kind of filmmaking that gives the movie its feel and tone. It's that grounded camera work. It's being on real sets instead of green screen stages." Arjen Tuiten was a fan from the very beginning. "I always loved the Terror Dogs. They scared me when I was a kid, and I always loved Randy Cook's design." Initially, another workshop had been tasked with the Terror Dogs. However, this soon changed. "They called about two weeks in and said, can you also do the Terror Dogs? And I thought of Stan Winston at that moment. I really did. And I knew he would have done it in that situation, you know? So I'm like, yeah, of course, we can do it." During the process, production came in and wanted to change aspects of the design. But Arjen stood firm in his opinion that the Terror Dogs were already perfect. He explains, "I'm all for updating things, but you have to be careful at times. As a Ghostbusters fan, I always felt that certain characters should not change. The Terror Dogs are set in stone and beautifully designed. They don't need to change." Arjen eventually convinced them to agree to stick to the original design. Arjen assembled the Terror Dog team intending to have the best summer creating the creature. "I knew this was going to be something great. And I said to the crew, let's just have fun with it." Despite having more 'high tech' options available, including digitally scanning the maquette and milling it in full-size out of foam, Arjen wanted to do it 'old school.' He said to his team, "What if we build an armature based on the maquette and just sculpt it out of clay and have two or three weeks of fun? This will be a summer you will remember for the rest of your lives." "We took about 600 pounds of WED clay, and Norman Cabrera, Tanner White, Danny Wagner, Brian Rae and I sculpted it." After molding the Terror Dog sculpture, there was the coring process. There was a discussion that perhaps they should run the skin out of silicone, but Arjen felt it would be far too heavy. "Coming back to the aesthetic of the first one, I felt the foam was just the right thing to do." The Terror Dog's body skin was run by Spectral Motion foam technician Bill Fesh, while the head foam skins and other cosmetic elements were created at Arjen. With the cosmetic work underway, Spectral Motion's Bill Sturgeon scanned the core and designed all the internal head and body mechanisms. Spectral's Jurgen Heimann would be tasked with building the head mechanism based on Sturgeon's design. Seeing the finished puppet on-set was a treat for the entire crew. Arjen smiles, "I remember the crew jumping up and down seeing a practical Terror Dog. I think it's the only show that I got applause." Even the VFX department and the actors were in awe. "I remember Paul Rudd being ecstatic about it being an actual [Terror Dog] puppet on his car. When I looked at the video village to my left on set, I just saw everybody smiling. The visual effects supervisor Alessandro Ongaro came up to me, and he said, 'you know, if [practical effects] are done right, there's something about it. You can't predict it. It's beautiful. We are going to leave it just the way it is.' CGI complemented the practical effects as elegantly as possible when it was required. Arjen elaborates, "The farm sequences are all visual effects. However, Jason [Reitman] was adamant about visual effects using our Terror Dog model, not the other way around. So they scanned our sculptures and used that as their model. They all looked handcrafted and not too symmetrical."

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