John Rando is well aware of that famous W.C. Fields line, “Never work with children or animals.”

It’s just that Rando doesn’t agree with those sentiments.

Rando is directing “Because of Winn Dixie” at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, and the show is, yes, populated with a number of children and features the central character of a dog named Winn Dixie. Rando says he gets “wonderful joy” out of working with kids and dogs.

“I really enjoy working with young actors and developing them as artists, seeing where their talents are and helping them to grow and develop as artists and at the same time (help them) be really good onstage and really interesting and really real — whatever the show requires. In this case, the show requires some in-depth reality,” he says.

As for the canine component, Rando is happy to be working again with legendary dog trainer Bill Berloni. Berloni, who lives in Higganum, first trained an animal in 1976 when Goodspeed was debuting a then-unknown show called “Annie.” He has since been involved in a slew of shows on stage and on TV and in movies, and he has been honored with a Tony award.

Rando previously collaborated with Berloni on the musical adaptation of “A Christmas Story,” which opened on Broadway in 2012.

“Bill and I really hit it off doing that one,” Rando recalls. “Then his wife Dorothy said, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing “Winn Dixie.”’ Scott Landis, producer, had also mentioned it to me. ‘We’re trying to write a show that’s got a dog at the center of it and really has to act.’ I thought, ‘That sounds so interesting and so cool.’”

The notion was that, instead of having an animal do the expected tricks, Rando says, they would try to create a sense of real life, real behavior so the dog would have a story, a through line, and would be the instrument of change in the tale.

“All of that made me very excited and very interested — how are we actually going to achieve this? I knew how talented he (Berloni) was, and since I had worked with him, I thought, ‘If there’s anyone who can pull this off, it would be Bill,’” Rando says.

Rando was particularly impressed when he was introduced to Berloni’s dog Bowdie, who is starring in “Winn Dixie.” As with all of Berloni’s dogs, Bowdie is a rescue (they believe he is around 5 years old and is some kind of Doodle), and his roles have included Nana in “Peter Pan Live” on NBC and Schnoodle in “Elmo’s World” on “Sesame Street.”

“When I first met Bowdie, I was completely taken with him,” Rando says. “I could see he was so beautifully alive and interesting to look at. When he looks at you or he turns his head, his focus is really sharp and interesting. I knew he could steal the light because he has a star quality — he’s a dog that actually has a star quality.”

The creative minds behind the show

The appeal of the project went beyond that, too, for Rando. He has had an affection for the “Winn Dixie” story since he read the book by Kate DiCamillo with his son, who was then in fourth grade. In the children’s novel, a girl named Opal moves with her preacher father to a small town in Florida with its share of lost souls. Things change when Opal finds and adopts the stray dog that she names Winn Dixie. “A stray gets brought in, and then, through that, the world evolves and starts to find its identity,” Rando says.

In addition to his fondness for the story, Rando has long wanted to work with the two people who are transforming DiCamillo’s narrative into a stage musical. Nell Benjamin, who is handling the show’s book and lyrics, also co-wrote the music and lyrics for “Legally Blonde: The Musical” and wrote the lyrics for the “Mean Girls” musical. Writing the music for “Because of Winn Dixie” is Duncan Sheik, who won Tony awards for best score and best orchestrations for “Spring Awakening” and who had a hit single with “Barely Breathing.”

Sheik, who is from Georgia, “got the sound of the south beautifully in the score,” Rando says, adding that a lot of Sheik’s music is evocative and atmospheric while also being tuneful.

Rando says Benjamin is an incredibly smart and funny lyricist who is also a penetrating thinker about how lyrics can illuminate character and develop story.

This dog is a natural

Rando says that Bowdie is comfortable onstage and with actors around him, and that certainly seems the case during a recent rehearsal. Actors are crowded together for a production number, and then Bowdie, on cue, scampers into their midst, his tail wagging. He eventually settles in front of Josie Todd, the young actress who plays the 13-year-old Opal, while she pats and hugs him.

(A note about the relationship between Bowdie and the actress playing Opal: The girls further along in the audition process auditioned with Bowdie. Once Todd got the role, she went to “Bowdie Boot Camp,” spending a week on the Berlonis’ farm bonding and learning to work with Bowdie.)

Rando notes that developing Bowdie’s part in the show has been an interesting process that involves some trial and error. Benjamin might think of a behavior for Bowdie to do onstage. She’d talk to Berloni, who would say they could probably get the dog to do this or that. They might be able to get him onto the sofa, for instance, but there has to be something to draw him there — the question would be how to accomplish that.

Or Berloni might come up with something Bowdie can do, show it to the creative team, and then they consider how they might logically work that into the show.

In general, there are things Bowdie will do naturally on his own that he repeats, Rando says. The behaviors used in “Winn Dixie” are encouraged by positive reinforcement and treats.

Rando says that a big revelation for him has involved the point of focus; when a dog is looking at a trainer offstage, how do you convince the audience that the dog is actually listening or looking at, say, the actor who’s talking to him?

“If I can get Bowdie in the right place on the stage, he can listen to a conversation and watch people talking, and it appears that he’s understanding what the conversation is about, even though he’s just a dog,” Rando says.

That’s achieved with the staging of a scene, with Berloni advising what the best placement of Bowdie might be.

One unique idea Berloni had was that, if he’s in the orchestra pit, Bowdie will look at him and it will seem as though he’s looking at the audience and listening to something.

The sound of music

If you think Bowdie might not know his cues, consider this. Before a run of the show in Alabama, they were using the understudy dog during some of the tech rehearsal, since those days are long and they didn’t want to tire out Bowdie. But the speakers were on in the dressing room where Bowdie was resting and were piping in what was happening onstage. When he heard the song “Awoo” being performed, which Opal sings to Winn Dixie, Bowdie got agitated and started barking. Rando says it was as though Bowdie was thinking, “‘Wait, that’s my cue, I’m supposed to be doing something at that point.’ So the music is also a trigger for him. As we repeat over and over again, he recognizes the music and is able to know what to do.”

A story about ‘forgiveness and healing’

Rando notes that “Winn Dixie” is a story for all ages, but it’s not a fairy tale. It’s real life, with people dealing with some hard issues, including a girl dealing with the loss of her younger brother and another girl dealing with the absence of her mother.

He says that “Winn Dixie” “is rich with characters — interesting characters, funny characters.”

There’s a woman considered the town witch, a hermit who has a tree with hundreds of liquor bottles hanging from it. Opal talks to the woman, discovering more about her and what she’s lived through.

And there’s Otis, who runs a pet store and has a reputation as someone who went to jail and so kids should stay away from him. Opal defies that restriction, though, and when she meets him, she learns about his true self and how different that is from the public perception.

“Ultimately, the show is about overcoming your faults and forgiveness and healing from wounds, whether they’re self-inflected or (not),” Rando says.

Did you know?

John Rando, who won a Tony for directing 2001’s “Urinetown” and was nominated for a Tony for directing the 2015 revival of “On the Town,” is also working on a musical adaptation of the movie “Back to the Future.” The script is by the film’s co-screenwriter, Bob Gale, and music is by Glenn Ballard, who co-wrote and produced Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” album. “It’s really exciting. It’s really fun,” Rando says. The show is scheduled to open in Manchester, England, early next year, with a later move to London. At this point, there aren’t plans to bring it to New York.

If you go

What: “Because of Winn Dixie”

Where: The Goodspeed, 6 Main St., East Haddam

When: Runs through Sept. 1; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Thurs. (with select performances at 2 p.m.), 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., and 2 p.m. Sun. (with select performances at 6:30 p.m.)

Tickets: Start at $29

Contact: (860) 873-8668, www.goodspeed.org.