Matt Damon has five rescue dogs at home, and he sounds open to making it six.
Speaking to The Dodo after visiting the Eastwood Ranch Foundation’s Animal Rescue and Adoption Facility in California, the Odyssey star, 55, talked about the dogs he and his wife Luciana, 49, have taken in over the years.
“We have five dogs already ranging in age from two to 12,” Damon said, while holding a puppy he called a “little lovebug.” “We love to rescue dogs. They’re just the greatest.”
Damon said the couple’s oldest dog is Charlie, though “we called him ‘Charles.'” Their other dogs are Osita, Cookie, Rudy and Scoutie. Of Cookie, he said, “She’s kinda like royalty, she’s kinda like a princess.” Rudy’s nickname is “Rudesters.”
“We live in Brooklyn, so it’s tough to keep accruing these dogs, but we love them and we do give them a great life,” he said.
Asked if he might leave the rescue with another dog, Damon said: “Who knows? I wouldn’t bet against us leaving with a dog today.”
During his visit to the Agoura Hills, California, rescue, which specializes in saving pets from high-kill shelters, Damon went on a “date” with Betsy, a pit bull waiting to be adopted.
“For one reason, it was the first date my wife has allowed me to go on in 23 years,” he joked in a video shared to Instagram by the foundation, before saying he was there for the charity’s free community adoption event over the weekend.
Damon also shared how he, Luciana and their four daughters, Alexia, Isabella, Gia and Stella, adopted a cat and a dog during a trip to Costa Rica in 2014.
“We went to Costa Rica and came back with a cat and a dog,” he said.
“The cat was surviving on his own in the jungle,” Damon recalled. “He was just hunting whatever he could find, so we were staying in this little Airbnb, and we started to feed him. We were there for a month, and so, by the end, we realized that he was probably dependent on us. So we caught him, and he had a great life. He passed away a year and a half ago. But he was just the most staunch, incredible cat.”
The dog the family brought back from Costa Rica was Osita, who was 6 weeks old when they met her. Damon said she still has the personality of a “survivor beach dog,” “even though she grew up with us and has never missed a meal.”
“We call her our apocalypse dog because if anything ever went wrong, she’d probably be the one we could rely on,” he said.
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