This Vermont town tried to break the world record of dogs at a film screening. How it went

While Vermont filmmaker Andy Knight Mitchell is used to winning Emmy Awards for his films, at a recent screening in his hometown of Middlebury, Mitchell went for a different title.

On Saturday, Aug. 10 at Memorial Sports Center's screening of Netflix's "Inside the Mind of a Dog," Mitchell and the community of Middleboro attempted to break the Guinness World Record for most dogs in attendance at a film screening.

Mitchell got the idea from his 13 year-old son, Billy, who saw that a Los Angeles screening of 2023's "Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie" held the record. Mitchell thought the idea sounded fun and decided to give his dog movie a shot at the record.

The event was sponsored by Middlebury Underground, a non-profit organization which Mitchell co-founded, and partnered with Homeward Bound Animal Shelter.

How to break the world record

The record-holding screening of the Paw Patrol movie has 219 dogs in attendance, meaning Middlebury needed 220 to win the record. People and their dogs had to wait in a registration line so all of the dogs could be counted on the way into the building.

Guinness World Record 's rules for this challenge included one dog per person, no clothing or accessories on dogs, owners must clean up all waste and all dogs must be leashed, accompanied, over one year old and up-to-date on vaccines.

The hard part? All dogs also had to sit and watch the film with their owners for at least ten minutes. While some owners expected their dogs to have no problem watching other dogs on the big screen for a few minutes, others expressed they would need to keep their dogs from getting excited.

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Did they break the world record?

The prospects for Middlebury winning the title looked good, with 280 dogs registered to watch Mitchell's film. Unfortunately, only 206 of those dogs showed up - just 14 dogs away from beating the world record, according to reports.

Although they didn't achieve the record, spirits in Middlebury were high, and Mitchell said he thinks it's likely that they will bring their pooches together to try again in the future.

"We get three tries at this, so you never know," Mitchell told Vermont Public Radio . "We'll see if the community is up for it. But we're so close, we know we can do it."

Brent Hallenbeck of Burlington Free Press contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: This Vermont town tried to break the world record of dogs at a film screening. How it went